The Sense of Boundary in Architecture - Michael Graves - Pidgeon Digital

The Sense Of Boundary In Architecture | Michael Graves | Pidgeon Digital 14/05/20, 15:46
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The Sense Of Boundary In

Architecture
Michael Graves (Michael Graves Architecture & Design)
MICHAEL GRAVES. 1982

©Monica Pidgeon
One of the major elements in architecture that

we must be conscious of, I think, as the quality
of boundary, the idea that we must in
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architecture separate one place from the other.

We could, if we were pragmatic, say we must
separate hot from cold or, in the social sense,
here from there or public from private. In the
religious sense, we could even say the idea of
separation of sacred on one side and profane
on the other becomes essential for our society,
our culture. It is essential I think to make
understood to us, the society, that space is not
homogenous, that indeed we need the
separations and boundaries of place to place, to
understand our individual and particular
realms. It is the sense of boundary which also
allows the architect to construct ultimately the
wall, the place that separates these two realms,
one side from the other. Because it is that
boundary that we ultimately make the place of
passage. The idea that one first makes the wall
to separate two things and then finds a way to
combine them again. That combination of
course allows that privacy and that passage of
one place from the other. But that very act of
making the hole in the wall, the excision in that
surface, allows us to note that place as a
threshold, as a condition of passage that
becomes crucial for our society in knowing our
place one side or the other. If one sees the door
as a symbolic element, we can as well see it as a
pragmatic device for combining two sides of
two places, rather than thinking as much of
modern architecture does of space as simply
continuous.
2
THE POIKILE, HADRIAN'S

VILLA
©Michael Graves
If one looks at the wall of Hadrian's Villa you

see in a craft tradition that is not complex, one
of simply piling one stone upon the other, a
formal situation of boundary that is quite clear
in the density and severity of that wall; the will
to make a door is slight where the idea of a
separation, one side from the other, has been
clarified by the density of that wall. It's quite
clear what Hadrian meant by building such a
secure fortification around his villa, he wanted
to separate us, the people on the outside, from
him and his court on the inside.
3
OIL FACTORY, BRISGANE
©Michael Graves
If, however, one looks at the next slide, an oil

storage facility at Brisgane in North Africa, it is
another kind of wall: the most porous wall that I
could illustrate for you relative to the same
craft tradition of piling one stone upon another.
But here we have just the opposite
phenomenon as we had in the former slide of
Hadrian's Villa. The porous nature of this wall is
such that is subscribes quite clearly to the
function of the building. We would nevertheless
call it a wall. It is a separation between two
places. It is, however, made so porous because
the way that material inside this wall was
stored, was something that had to have full
aeration. Sometimes one can find that in
agrarian structures, in barn-like structures

where that porosity is essential for passage of
air. But clearly between the two pictures, one
has the formal possibility of making the wall,
one dense and one porous.
THEATRE AT SABRATHA
©Michael Graves
In the next example, the theatre at Sabratha, it

becomes clear that our society, our culture, has
used the wall in an extremely complex manner
as well as the rather simple former examples.
Here we find in Roman theatre the idea of both
the wall and the column giving us a space
between the back and the middle ground of this
particular proscenium, which allows the
passage of a secondary character in this
theatre. In the foreground of the stage, where

the primary action occurs, we have no doubt
about who is primary and what action is
primary for this particular stage. However,
probably the more interesting architectural
event is that of the space held between the
columns and the wall just behind it, about a
three or four foot passage there, where a
thespian secondary or tertiary actor can speak
over the primary action of the stage and let us
in as the audience, into the action taking place
just beyond. That's important when we are not
part of the, shall we say, 'in' crowd, the
cognoscenti, knowing all of the activities that
might be described in the narrative of the
primary action. The architect has given this
space to us because it is important for that
Thespian, that secondary or tertiary actor, to be
a part of the outside as well as the inside. And
so he stands in this very ambiguous or nebulous
place, between the wall and the column,
exercising that right of the wall, in becoming in a
sense a part of the wall. At the same time the
architect has given us a view through the centre
of the stage, of the real outside beyond the
make-believe of the action on the stage. So, like
Proust, he has given us a place at the edge or
the surface of the building that can call
attention to the character's nature by virtue of
the architectural construct around him, this
case, the distance between the wall and the
column.
5
VERNACULAR HOUSE, LAKE

COMO REGION
©Michael Graves
The next example is a vernacular house in

Como, Italy, a house above and a small
restaurant called Il Giardino down below. It is
something that one could as well read as a wall,
a surface on the street. It is, by virtue of these
collective surfaces, that we start to make our
streets and understand the difference between
the street and the interior, or the street and the
walk beside the street. But here it starts to
exhibit the vernacular language that we have

now assumed in architecture to be essential to
the society, to allow us to read or understand
the mimetic or mime value of the wall, how it
speaks back to us without certainly uttering a
word. But here the grand or large door at the
base is clearly a public door. A big door allows
us passage into the restaurant and the garden
behind this building. Above, that opening at its
upper level, its keystone level, finds the
Wisteria growing across the top of it, which is
an ancient symbol for allowing us to think of the
building itself as a garden. We are entering the
pleasure garden. Above that one finds the
mezzanine which is often a kind of service floor.
Then the first major social floor of the house,
the piano nobile, the noble floor of the house,
which borrows in this case a little space from
the street in its continuous balcony, where we
can walk out on that balcony. But it's important
to know as well that, while the language is very
simple, in terms of a three-part relationship of
ground, body and head. Here we have the body
of the building, separated from the street, now
giving some privacy from the noise and
pollution of the street, while the next floor up is
clearly in this case the attic storey, the
bedrooms of this house. We see the bedclothes
out for airing, again a further separation from
the street while still in contact with the life of
the city in the street. It gives us more light, air
and ventilation for the bedrooms at the head of
the building.
6
DOOR, PAVILION NINE,
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
©Michael Graves
The next picture I want to show you is the

Pavilion No.9 at the University of Virginia in the
USA. It is important to describe first, the wall,
and then to start to look at the elements of the
wall. It is the door, the window, the wall, the
column, the floor, the ceiling in architecture
that somehow describe for us as clearly as

possible the enclosures that we ultimately
inhabit. Now at the University of Virginia,
Benjamin Latrobe and Thomas Jefferson have
made a door that is for me very articulate in a
sense of our passage from the lawn in the
foreground to the covered passage or
colonnade, and ultimately ascending two steps
up to the door itself. The passage between the
two columns that frame the door separate the
wall that was once there and now open for us to
pass through, and then ultimately to the door. If
you notice, the door itself is scaled for human
habitation. It's a small door, it is our size, while
the symbol of the whole has been made much
larger by virtue of that great excision or cut into
the brick wall, giving us light and air and the
idea of size or largeness of this very important
door on this University campus, never at the
same time, never giving up the human size of
the door itself.
DOOR, PAVILION NINE,

NEWARK AIRPORT
©Michael Graves
The next door is, I'm afraid, a negative example

of passage or threshold. It is a door that now
has erased from our culture those symbols or
elements that we once knew and knew how to
work with. Here the door is made just exactly
like the adjacent window, so slim in its
proportions and its detailing that we can no
longer feel a sense of tactile quality relative to
the door. We can't open the door; the door
opens automatically for us. The architect has
been required to paste on paper flowers so that
we don't walk into the door and the door
becomes dangerous for us. It is reflective glass
and it's even been made to look like bronze. It's
been made to reflect the landscape, but in this
particular modern door the only thing it reflects
is a parking lot.
ANNUNCIATION BY
BOTTICELLI
©Michael Graves
The next is the supreme example of the way

painting might use the door as a metaphor.
Here in Botticelli's 'Annunciation' one finds the
difference between the opening of the room,
the door itself, and the closure of the room
where the Virgin stands, to be the two parts of
what painting would call a diptych a two-panel
painting, one to show the differences between
outside and inside in this case. The archangel
has come from the heavens above, he has come
through that door and stands in a sense on the
axis of the door, kneels in front of the door so
that we don't miss the point where he has
emerged from. While the Virgin stands in the
closed part of the room and is surrounded by
the wall. Neither of them penetrating the
portion of the room not belonging to them. But
it's important for us to know in the painted
language of Botticelli where the Archangel has
come from and where the Virgin has come

from. The Archangel seems to be pushing back
the wall with his hand which is ambiguously
located within the space of the painting. In
other words, he is spreading the heavenly light
across the room by pushing open the wall and
bringing in that light to allow the Virgin to be
given the message, the message that she is now
with child.
9
SUNAR SHOWROOM,
HOUSTON. ENTRANCE TO
TEXTILE DISPLAY. GRAVES
FURNITURE
©Michael Graves
The next slide is an idea of passage of one of my

own buildings. It is a door which moves us from
one large space, through a connecting passage,
finally into a terminal space, the end of the axis,
in a simple showroom in Houston, Texas. This
showroom is for fabrics and furniture of the
Sunar Furniture Company. We have built
several of these showrooms around the USA. A
furniture showroom is somewhat like a small
museum in that it need show all the elements
that this company make, at the same time
allowing us passage through the entire plan, on
a trip that will not repeat itself. But here, like
the University of Virginia Pavilion No.9, we

have as well tried in the passage from place to
place to pair the columns, to open up the soffit,
to centre our passage by attic windows through
the organisation or the composition, so that you
know your way.
10
SUNAR SHOWROOM,
DALLAS, TEXTILE PAVILION
©Michael Graves
The next picture is also in a Sunar showroom.

This one is in Dallas, Texas. But it is important
here for me to show the difference between the
character of one passage and the character of
another. Certainly, this doorway is very much
different than the ones that we have seen
before, and this doorway surrounded by a great
swag of textiles or fabric, paired by two chairs

of our own design, allows passage ascending
into a fabric room where only the textiles are
shown, where furniture is shown in the
surrounding space. Here textiles are shown in a
much more brilliant light than one would
normally have for the furniture that surrounds
it. So it was important for us to make a wall
around the textiles.
11
SUNAR SHOWROOM,
DALLAS. TEXTILE PAVILION
©Michael Graves
The next is another view of the same textile

pavilion in Dallas, Texas. This is the backside of
it. It is no longer frontal, or does not produce
the frontal sequence of passage as the other
side did. Here we wanted to gain access

through a porch and allow the whole idea of
this textile room to be generally accessible from
the furniture space around it.
12
ORANGE COUNTY PUBLIC

LIBRARY, SAN JUAN
CAPISTRANO, CALIFORNIA.
SITE PLAN & MODEL
©Michael Graves
We have won a competition in San Juan

Capistrano, Southern California, for a new
library, a town library, and this building will be
under construction in 1982. The building finds
itself on two streets; one is a minor street for
bus access to the library, the other, the high
street of San Juan. It was stressed to us in
beginning this competition that we should be

sympathetic to the prevailing style of San Juan
Capistrano which is Spanish Colonial. The
Spanish Colonial style was started by Father
Serra who moved up from South America and
Mexico through California, starting a number of
missions all along the California coast. This
mission that Father Serra started in San Juan
was destroyed by and large by a rather
disastrous earthquake at the turn of the last
century.
13
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

MISSION, CALIFORNIA.
CORRIDOR
©Michael Graves
This is the cortile of the Serra Mission in San
Juan, the only portion of that Spanish Colonial

building now remaining. But it becomes a
prototype for the courtyard building of San
Juan, and it allows us, in organising our building,
to understand the quality of light and
ventilation for such a building where the
weather is hot and humid, to find ways of
cooling the surrounding rooms in such a way
that is natural to the site and natural to the
building type. For us to gather the various
rooms of our new library around such a
courtyard as the San Juan Mission formerly
had, seemed to make ultimate sense to us.
14
ORANGE COUNTY PUBLIC
LIBRARY, SAN JUAN
CAPISTRANO, CALIFORNIA.
SITE PLAN & MODEL
©Michael Graves
In the model of the building seen here, one sees

the courtyard as the primary organising device
which allows the right hand side of the picture
to describe here the series of rooms under
which one finds the various light canons that
bring a conditioned or quality of light into each
of the reading rooms below. Separated by a
clerestory line that gives light into the stacks,
the storage area of the books. Around that
courtyard one finds as well another clerestory
which gives light down into the children's
reading rooms, and then on the third and left
side one sees a series of reading gazebos,
courtyard buildings that will allow in the future
the building to have additions made to it, as the
small pavilions or gazebos can be taken away
for interior construction. And then finally on
the back side of the slide, an auditorium for the
library which accommodates the change in
grade of approximately six feet, for the entire
length of the site.
15
ENVIRONMENTAL
EDUCATION CENTER
('WILDLIFE CENTER'),
LIBERTY STATE PARK, NEW
JERSEY. PRELIMINARY
ENTRANCE FACADE
©Michael Graves
The next building I'd like to show you is a

doorway separating two pavilions used for a
small museum in New Jersey. I wanted to show
you this elevation of the front face of the
building because I want to describe here the
symmetry that allows us to know left from right,
or arm from arm, with the body of the building,
the centre torso of the building, located in such
a way that we understand again mimetically
how that building is read or described spatially
as we approach it. On the left is a pavilion used
for exhibitions as is the pavilion on the right,
connected as you see by the structure and
surround of the porch, and then the foyer, and
ultimately a lecture-hall behind of the centre of
body of the building. That's very different for
instance than that that we found in San Juan
Capistrano where we were dealing with a
corner site which required us to enter at one
point of the building which was not
anthropomorphically or symmetrically
organised. But here, where we had a chance to
do that, it seemed appropriate to make such a
symmetry on this particular site.
16
PORTLAND, OREGON.
STREET IN 1870S
©Michael Graves
The last project I'd like to show is a building in

Portland, Oregon. Portland is a city now over
one hundred years old. It was founded in 1851
in the North West of the USA. It is a city that is
made up of blocks that are organised two
hundred by two hundred feet on a side.
Therefore many of the buildings in Portland
occupy the entire site. The entire block is
devoted to one building, as is the program brief
for ours organised in such a way that it will
occupy the entire site. But it's important here
to see the structure of the town in this slide
taken at the turn of the century where the
street, like that in San Juan Capistrano, and that
that we saw in Como, and even that that we saw

in Hadrian's Villa is constructed in such a way as
to provide a surface upon which we read the
organisation of the building and the spaces
beyond. That surface of the facade is that mime
quality that the building's face gives us, so we
know how to act relative to its portal, its entry,
its threshold. And here we see as well the
continuous porch, crudely done to be sure, here
at the turn of the century in. the North West of
the US, but nevertheless a continuous element
in the architecture of that town. That porch is
made in such a way as to keep the rain from the
shoppers, the commercial district at the ground
level.
17
THE PORTLAND BUILDING.

MODEL
©Michael Graves
Here in our particular site one sees the

adjacent buildings, one being in the centre of
this slide facing a three park square, each of
them, as I said before, two hundred feet on a
side. To the left of our building is the existing
four-storey city hall. To the right is the existing
county court house. Behind our buildings we
have two of the city's banks and soon a third
will be built on that one remaining empty site.
One starts to understand the frontality of our
building and the two adjacent buildings on the
site, the site comprising, as I say one side park,
the other side being the commercial high street
of Portland, Oregon, called 5th Avenue. This
street provides us a way of organising the
commercial zone at the base of our building for
that shopping district. It was a brilliant program
that was written by an architect in Portland
(not myself) that would have in this city hall
annexe of ours, which is essentially the brief of
our building, commercial at the ground floor,
not to lose that sense of the commercial in the

city while the more honorific activity takes
place up above.
18
BLAISDELL SAW BUILDING
©Michael Graves
The next building facade is a typical facade of
Portland, again turn of the century. Here we

start to see, like those early pictures I showed,
the tripartite arrangement of ground, piano
nobile and attic storey. The real foundation of
the city is made out of buildings such as this.
19
FIFTH AVENUE ELEVATION
©Michael Graves
Our building shown here tries to use a similar

language of base body and head. It is not trying
to use that same Victorian and Renaissance and
eclectic styles that we found before, but simply
see, as type, the idea of shopping at the base,
the piano nobile of the building being now
collective floors where the city occupies ten
floors, the first ten floors of the building, and
then supports, and is characterised here by a

lintel or keystone above, supports commercial
offices. The Portland Building, as it is known
now, was an invited competition which we were
fortunate to win, a competition which required
that the architect work with a contractor from
the first day of design. It's called in the USA
'design build'. It is something that I found much
to my liking because it helped us limit the
expense of the building to know the cost of the
building all the way through the design process.
In fact, we were required by the conditions of
the competition to sign a contract that would
say that we would build the building for
$22,420,000 and not a penny more. And, in
fact, if we could build the building for less they
offered that we could keep all the change.
Obviously we were not able to. This building is
only $51 a square foot, which is very, very little
in a city that now builds buildings of comparable
size for $125 a square foot. So you know that
this building, though it may look to be, in its
coloration and in its form, to have richness, it is
essentially a building that is simple in its
construction and simple in its plan and core
organisation.
20
PRELIMINARY FIRST FLOOR
PLAN
©Michael Graves
I show you the core in this plan which is located

in the centre of the building. This too helps not
only the construction of the building, the ease
of construction of the building but also starts to
organise our plan in a rather orthodox manner.
But that orthodoxy saves money on one hand
and allows us passage into the surface of the
wall of this building, into the various public and
private rooms beyond. That section you see in
this plan a pochéd or coloured section around
the outside periphery of the building is the
shopping arcade that is prevalent all through
Portland and here used again in our building.
21
VIEW FROM PARK
©Michael Graves
The view of the building from the park is seen

here past the park benches and then on to the
two different faces of the building, one on the
park, the other the side of the building. And
clearly the difference between those two
reflects the difference between the high streets
and the side streets of Portland. All of Portland
is organised in a grid pattern with the North-
South streets being the shopping streets of
Portland, the secondary streets being the side
streets as you see here on what are called Main
and Madison.
22
MODEL OF 'PORTLANDIA'
©Michael Graves
The next picture shows a piece of sculpture

which we have called Portlandia. We were
required by the brief of this competition to use
one percent of the budget for art. My thought
has been that the building itself could stand, in
it's symbolic stance at least, on a site as art as
well as the shelter which it's expected to
provide us as a society, and it seems quite
awkward today to be required to add one
percent of the budget for art. But nevertheless,
the idea that sculpture and painting, murals and
mimetic and identifiable art, has been a
tradition in building, seemed appropriate in this
case to re-see, re-identify the city symbol, a
woman statue used on the city seal that

denoted in her various iconographic stance
holding a trident and a wreath, that she stood
as a symbol of the sea where Portland is
located, and the wreath made not in this time of
acanthus leaves but the wreath showing the
unity of the city but made in wheat, one of the
agrarian symbols of the city, was something
that could document and allow people from
Portland to identify with this particular figure.
23
MODEL FROM THE PARK
©Michael Graves
While the figure of Portlandia identifies the

front door of the building on Fifth Avenue, the
great sconce at the top of the building allows us
to see from the upper reaches of the building,

the attic storey, the great view of the
Willamette River which is the organising
feature of Portland, Oregon, as well as Mount
Hood, the grand mountain just beyond the
Willamette River. From the side one can see
Mount St. Helens, the mountain that has
recently erupted in the North West.
24
TUSCAN FARMHOUSE
©Michael Graves
Finally, I would like to close with a picture of the

Campagna outside Rome. A picture which
allows us to see the tripartite organisation of
function, symbolic value as well as the surface
value of any architectural composition. Like our
Portland building, one can see in this slide the
elements of the individual as he might address

the small fountain or well in the foreground of
this picture. One to one, we understand our
station and our stance in the landscape relative
to this particular kind of aedicular or small
building. We also understand it symbolically as
well as pragmatically because it is the
sustenance from the earth that we are getting
through that well. Just behind that well one
sees the collective nature of the several rooms
of the farmhouse, very much like the grand
window, the reflective window, in Portland.
Where one saw the collection of the city
services, here one sees the larger family, not
the individual now as we did at one to one at
the well but now the collective family seen
within the agglomerate rooms making this
particular farmhouse. And finally one looks at
the great aqueduct, the ruin of the aqueduct
behind both the well and the farmhouse, and
understands as we attempted to understand in
our Portland building and other examples that
I've shown here: that the collective of the city is
a much larger organisation and can be read not
only into the city structure as it is the collection
of buildings and places, activities and
institutions, but also within each building we
have the individual of the window as the well,
we have the collection of rooms and services as
we have in the farmhouse; and finally we have
the city collective as registered in the facade or
the structure of the whole building as it
connotes the support of the city services to that
of the commercial and institutional life beyond.
Related talks:
Geoffrey Frei Otto Eduardo Lawrence

Jellicoe Self-Designing Paolozzi Halprin
Abstract Art Into Structures Working With The Ecology Of
Landscape 1982 Architects Form
1982 1982 1982
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HOME ABOUT EXPLORE SUBSCRIBE FAQ CONTACT

The Sense Of Boundary In

MICHAEL GRAVES. 1982

One of the major elements in architecture that

architecture separate one place from the other.

THE POIKILE, HADRIAN'S

If one looks at the wall of Hadrian's Villa you

If, however, one looks at the next slide, an oil

agrarian structures, in barn-like structures

In the next example, the theatre at Sabratha, it

theatre. In the foreground of the stage, where

VERNACULAR HOUSE, LAKE

The next example is a vernacular house in

exhibit the vernacular language that we have

The next picture I want to show you is the

that somehow describe for us as clearly as

DOOR, PAVILION NINE,

The next door is, I'm afraid, a negative example

The next is the supreme example of the way

come from and where the Virgin has come

The next slide is an idea of passage of one of my

the University of Virginia Pavilion No.9, we

The next picture is also in a Sunar showroom.

swag of textiles or fabric, paired by two chairs

The next is another view of the same textile

side did. Here we wanted to gain access

ORANGE COUNTY PUBLIC

We have won a competition in San Juan

beginning this competition that we should be

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

This is the cortile of the Serra Mission in San

Juan, the only portion of that Spanish Colonial

In the model of the building seen here, one sees

The next building I'd like to show you is a

The last project I'd like to show is a building in

that we saw in Como, and even that that we saw

THE PORTLAND BUILDING.

Here in our particular site one sees the

not to lose that sense of the commercial in the

The next building facade is a typical facade of

Portland, again turn of the century. Here we

Our building shown here tries to use a similar

then supports, and is characterised here by a

I show you the core in this plan which is located

The view of the building from the park is seen

The next picture shows a piece of sculpture

woman statue used on the city seal that

While the figure of Portlandia identifies the

to see from the upper reaches of the building,

Finally, I would like to close with a picture of the

elements of the individual as he might address

Geoffrey Frei Otto Eduardo Lawrence

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