FROM WORKSHOP TO SITE
SEPTEMBER 2020
At Millimetre’s workshop in Brighton, a tremendous steel skeleton has been rapidly emerging. It will form the delicate superstructure of a garden pavilion-cum-guesthouse destined for the Isle of Wight. In the main hangar, a healthy collection of gently oxidizing off-the-shelf steel sections and staggeringly sharp, bespoke milled elements is set back from a row of socially-distanced workspaces. Millimetre’s metal workers have been working around the clock (and in the excessive summer heat) to cut, weld and grind the heap in front of them into the many precise modular components that will form the pavilion’s columns, floor and roof. An assembly line has been formed to increase the efficiency of fabrication, with a station each for repetitive rotary welding tasks, rotary grinding, welding using custom jigs and more complicated non-linear welds. As the steel passes through the workshop, glistening segments come to form elaborate sculptures. Adjacent to the metalworking bays is a six-axis robot arm programmed to cut high density foam into jigs for the most intricate welding alignments. This will be essential to the success of the central roof truss node, where nine tubular sections converge. More on this will follow at a later date.
The pavilion will be lifted off the ground by cantilevering trusses held from the main columns, which are formed of four tubular sections tied together by intermittent thin plates along their height. The lower portions of these columns, which sit beneath the floor build-up, are amicably referred to as the daleks. These stub columns are the first pieces to be finalized, quickly assembled in tandem to confirm tolerances, and sent away to be painted for corrosion protection before arriving to site.
On the northeast coast of the Isle of Wight, the site falls to overlook a protected marshland with tidal flows fed by the Solent. A shallow depression with raking banks at the bottom of the hill will conceal the feet of the pavilion superstructure; the baseplates of the stub columns now erected atop the long strip foundations and adjoined to form the triangulated support for the floor and deck above. Located to capture rainwater dropping from the overhanging roof eaves, the perimeter gravel drain will also mark the boundary between building and landscape, with tall, wild grasses merging with the wetland beyond..
As the pavilion envelope will be formed largely of full-width glass spans closely abutting the columns, erecting the steel frame precisely is critical. Despite a remarkable installation tolerance of +/- 3mm diagonally across each 5 x 5m bay, the stub columns must be shimmed to ensure exact alignment and verticality. Between them, the galvanised (and thus silvery) internal floor beams are distinguishable from the external floor beams, which are coated to resist corrosion and painted to achieve a warm metallic finish. With the cantilevering terrace beams installed additionally, a datum is formed approximately 180mm below the intended finished floor level from which the remainder of the pavilion will rise..
Back in Brighton, the columns which will stand on the shoulders of the stubs now installed on site are laid out one by one. Their height and slenderness astound – a true feat for the structural engineers, Smith & Wallwork. It is through, not around these columns that the thermal envelope will run, with tall and narrow glazing centred on each column between the four vertical tubes. The next test-build will involve hoisting up these columns, narrowly missing the suspended lights of the workshop, to bolt on the roof trusses via the halving joints rigidly reaching out to receive them. That dramatic and exciting update will have to follow.
THERE IS MUSIC IN EVERY BUILDING
SEPTEMBER 2019
Back in March, I was lucky enough to take part in the annual TEDxCambridgeUniversity conference as one of the 14 speakers. Whilst daunting, this presented a wonderful opportunity to explore and develop my personal interest in architecture and music and how they might interrelate.
I am passionate about both subjects and have long since had a hunch that they are linked. This notion centred around the idea that both architecture and music are composed of layers. On further investigation, numerous parallels became apparent despite the fundamental difference that architecture is visual, physical, and music is aural, intangible.
They share common language – structure, rhythm, harmony, texture, form and so on.
They are both compositions. Architectural composition is the arrangement of building components in space, sensed with our eyes. Musical composition is the arrangement of sounds in time, sensed with our ears.
Architecture is given its distinctive quality or character through choice of materials – stone, brick, timber, glass and so on. The musical equivalent is the range of instruments and sounds available to a composer – piano, strings, brass, percussion for example.
Architectural drawings are like sheet music, one instructing builders on how to construct a building and the other instructing musicians on how to perform a piece of music. In this way, a busy building site resembles an orchestra.
In considering the relationship, one can’t go too far without referencing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous 18th century quote that “Architecture is frozen music”. This suggests solidifying, giving physical presence to sounds and led me to another line of questioning – can we translate the visual, physical, spatial components of architecture into the aural, intangible, time-based components of music? Can we look at a building and hear its music?
To help find answers, I contacted my brother – an electronic music producer – and we agreed to work together on a musical representation of a façade designed by this office – West Court for Jesus College Cambridge. It lends itself well to the test as there is a clear rhythm and well-defined order to the visual composition.
We considered each bay of the façade as a bar in the music with each layer of the façade translated into a different musical component. Repetitive structural brick piers were translated to a beat. The stone fins added to the rhythm as another layer of percussion. The first floor windows were represented as piano chords, setting the groove and reinforcing the meter of the composition. The two floors above were translated into layers of melody, and the hidden foundations dictated the bassline.
The exercise was intended to be diagrammatic. My brother had many ideas about how to make a better piece of music but for me, the legibility of the translation was key. We could have pushed it further, giving more thought to which sounds or instruments might be best suited to different materials for example.
A lot has been written about the links between Classical architecture and music but I am more interested in the here and now. We are in a technological revolution. With the introduction of computers as a compositional tool over the last few decades, I think it is more apparent than ever that both contemporary architecture and music involve the organised, now computer-aided repetition of a series of components.
Today the primary instrumental music is Electronic. It is generally composed on a computer and it is this computer that “performs” the piece, creating the final “recording”. It is still the case that most buildings today are built, or at least put together, by hand, but change is afoot. The use of 3D printing, drones and even robots on building sites hints at a future in which computers replace humans as the “performers” in construction.
If we think about the classical music of the past in terms of the classical buildings of the past, we can align its melodies and orchestration with ornament, craft, organic sculptural form. Contemporary architecture is closer to electronic music. For some this will have negative connotations but it is important to recognize the full spectrum, from the mundanity of elevator music (or Muzak), to the ubiquity of pop music, and on to the progressive sounds of electro, house, techno and so on. As computers continue to have more impact on the way we practice, architects must embrace their potential in the same way music producers have, striving to be more Techno than Muzak.
To view the talk please click here.