[PAIR]ing DOWN

Meditation/Celebration:  Meditation gives you time to contemplate and go into deep thought.  It is a time for reflection and to give you time alone.  When you are meditating, you want to be in a relaxive state of mind.  Your body wants to feel at ease.  Celebration, however, is different because celebration means you are praising, worshiping, performing, and/or engaging in festivities.  Celebration always involves happiness and joy.  Casa Batilo has a sense of meditation and celebration because the curves in the walls are soothing to the mind, yet the colors in the house are celebrative in light.

Light/Shadow:  Light is what illuminates a room.  It is what all colors depend on.  Light is how a room is brightened to create shades of color.  Shadow does the opposite because shadow is what dulls a room or makes casts of darkness from the opposite side of light from an object.  Shadow is how we can tell that the earth moves during the day.  The Johnson house in New Cannan, Connecticut is the house of Philip Johnson.  The house is all windows on all sides of the façade, which allow for light and shadow to come into the room from the natural outdoors surrounding the house.

 

 

 

Transpose/Juxtapose:  Transpose and juxtapose are words I did not know and had to look up.  According to dictionary.com, transpose means, “to change the relative position, order, or sequence, or to transfer or transport.”  Juxtapose means, “to place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.”  Le Corbusier has his five points of architecture and he follows them in some of his designs for buildings.  In his house, Notre dame du haut, he uses free façade, free plan, pilotis, and ribbon windows.

Literal/Abstract:  Literal means that something means exactly what the word definition says.  It is always true to the fact.  Abstract in design is when you take something literal and turn it into an idea that makes up the concept.  It can be many ideas that make up the concept of the literal thing or object.  The Johnson Wax building is a building for workspaces.  There are lily pads in the workspace.  Literally there are no lily pads, but the columns that go up into the ceiling represent a lily pad in a different abstract form.

Monologue/Dialogue:  Monologue is a composition of a single element or idea when dialogue is a conversation between two people or exchange of ideas.  Falling Water and the Massaro House are both done by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Both of them are single houses that represent monologue, but when both of them are compared they have a lot of dialogue between them.  They have dialogue because they both relate in the way that both structures were built for the landscape around it.

Summary:  A place that is meditative as well as celebrative creates monologue and dialogue.  In order to make a celebration and mediation space, you must abstract the literal message/story you are trying to get across.  In order to abstract ideas you have to use juxtaposition and transposition to make that happen.  Everything has light and shadow effects when there is natural or artificial light.