CONSEQUENTIAL ILLUSIONS
TRANSCENDENT SLEIGHTS FOR THE FREE PLAN
In the Domino system, designed between 1914 and 1916 as a serial house patent for the reconstruction of areas destroyed during the First World War, Le Corbusier presents for the first time a radical division between container and content. By means of a rigid system made of concrete frames and slabs, this archetype allowed to release exterior walls and interior partitions from any structural accountability. A “free” plan layout within a grid of pillars. A universal space set not in Mies dimensional grid but on a bearing grid. The structural rigidity predicated as a support for mass production organizational flexibility.
In the Domino system, the disappearance of thresholds and load bearing walls makes pillars essential. In the Domino system, the multiplication of slabs makes stairs necessary. The essentiality of pillars and the need for stairs becomes evident in the perspective chosen by Le Corbusier as an archetype iconic image. A zero degree architecture where nothing but slabs, pillars and stairs can be seen.
Among the different versions of this perspective, the most frequently reproduced is that attached to this text. It is dated on 1918, two years after the patent was registered. Paying close attention to this representation brings out a particular condition that does not seem casual. In a feigned mistake, the two pillars on the perimeter supporting the landing of the stairs are missed. While this omission could be justified by the fact that, in a serial sequence, these two pillars would be redundant with those in the perimeter of the next module, its repercussion is relevant in the representation of a single module.
By the deliberate suppression of a structural axis, the stairs gain a special prominence where the need for its existence is displaced to the essence of its presence. By keeping the same slab depth as in versions where eight pillars are drawn, the only structural solution according to this dimension would imply the indispensable collaboration of stair stringers.
By a graphical ruse, a trompe l'oeil illusionism, the reality of their free status is perverted by its representation as an integrated structure. The image is no longer that of an articulated structure made of independent assembled elements. The stairs are, at the same time, a horizontal and vertical support. A representational illusionism that has consequences for the represented reality.
In the Sendai Mediatheque, where Toyo Ito instrumentally reinterprets the Domino system, the supporting structure is concentrated in circle plan lattices disposed over an interior grid and independently from the perimeter. By a change of scale, a trick of size increase, each pillar of the Domino has swelled to become a continuous and independent room where the connective cores are located. In the expanded universal space the grid remains, while the scaling has introduced a distortion in the form of latticed spaces hosting auxiliary programs. The spatial specialization predicated as a support for reproduction seriated organizations.
In the Sendai Mediatheque the will to make the structure disappear leads to its ornamental treatment as a perceptive dissolution mechanism. In the Sendai Mediatheque the necessary presence of the connective cores acts as a coordinates system for the location of the supporting grid that disguises them.
The light appearance of the supports, a required condition by the visual representation of a physical desire, along with the disappearance of the stairs, an essential condition for the achievement of a horizontal continuous space and vertical differentiation, become evident in the sketch where Toyo Ito summarizes this archetype.
Among the different versions of this typological scheme, the most frequently reproduced is that attached to this text. Again, the representative manipulation of reality transcends its condition. Disguised the stairs, it is no possible to delete anything else in the Euclidean Architectural system without comprising its credibility. In this new zero degree Architecture, there is just slabs and supports. No possibility of vertical is perceived.
Scale matters. While the “free” plan in the Domino system results in an isotropic space where the stairs compresses the bearing grid, the “freed” plan in the Sendai Mediatheque results in an anisotropic space made of densities and concentrations where the location of the connective cores forces the structural grid without altering it.
Magically, as if a magic trick, the stairs vanish from the visual field of the user, disguised inside augmented pillars. As in a brilliant sleight of hand, Toyo Ito offers, in exchange of increasing even more the system rigidity, what Le Corbusier pretended by means of graphical mechanisms. As a consequence, however, it is no longer possible to delegate on the stairs any responsibility, nor structural neither structuring.
In an Architecture predicated on a scheme made of independent realities and built as a stacked sequence of diagrams, each level is autonomously developed with absolute impunity. Far from disturbing continuities, the distinction between pillars and stairs is canceled by the subordinating integration of autonomous elements into a mixed reality. As a result, a dematerialized version of the skyscraper, as a social condenser of fragmented activities, shows the problem of informational self-reproductive spaces orientated towards indeterminate taylorist stages.
Reproduction of universal space, as a continuous stage, erases its essence until it becomes a notational space differentially atomized. Its meaning is written as easily as it is deleted by hyper specific furniture and illumination. Structural freedom achieved by Le Corbusier means, in the Sendai Mediatheque, a semiotic subordination for everything but structure.
As in a sophisticated trick, concessions due to auxiliary techniques require a skill that makes the repetition of the striking effect difficult. Unlike the Domino system, the Sendai Mediatheque does not offer a serial archetype. As a landscape of interchangeable uniformities, it is just expandable.
