PhD-defence: An Endemic Architecture: On Building Culture between Solid and Fluid Matter

Alex Hummel Lee defends the dissertation An Endemic Architecture: On Building Culture between Solid and Fluid Matter.

Agenda 
13:00 Welcome and presentation of chairperson, assessment committee, supervisors and author 

13:05 Alex Hummel Lee presents his dissertation An Endemic Architecture: On Building Culture between Solid and Fluid Matter 

13:50 Short break 

According to the ’Ministerial Order on the PhD Course of Study and the PhD Degree’ the chairperson may invite the audience to contribute with short statements. Such intentions should be addressed to the chairperson during the break. 

14:00 David Leatherbarrow, B.Arch., PhD in Art, Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Philadelphia, USA 

14:30 Michael Lauring, Cand. Arch., PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark 

15:00 Kristine Jensen, Lich. Arch., PhD, Professor, Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, KADK (chair of the assessment committee) 

15:30 Comments from the auditorium 

The assessment committee evaluates and makes the concluding remarks 

Closure of session 

Assessment committee
David Leatherbarrow B.Arch., PhD in Art, Professor, University of PennsylvaniaSchool of Design, Philadelphia, USA

Michael Lauring Cand. Arch., PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark 

Kristine Jensen Lich. Arch., PhD, Professor, Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape, KADK (Chair of the assessment committee) 

Principal Supervisor
Anne Beim Professor, PhD, Head of Center (CINARK), Institute of Architecture and Technology, KADK (Chairperson of the Defence) 

Co Supervisor
Anders Abraham Professor, Institute of Architecture and Culture, KADK 

The thesis is the result of a Ph.D.-studio financed by KADK, Institute of Architecture and Technology. The thesis is available to look through for interested persons at the Library of Architecture, Design and Performing Arts, Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 50, 1434 Copenhagen K. 

Dansk resumé 
Studiet dokumenterer grundforskning inden for et felt der betegnes arkitektonisk endemicitet forstået som medieringer mellem naturfænomener og arkitektur. Det er en undersøgelse af, hvordan de to gensidigt kan dirigere hinanden og danne bygninger af fast stof og klimaer af flydende stof, og frembringe umiskendelig stedsspecificitet i arkitekturen.

I anerkendelsen af en ofte udtrykt bekymring om tab af arkitektonisk følsomhed overfor miljøet, ønskes det med undersøgelsen at afsøge det tabte og hvordan det kan genopstå i arkitektonisk kreativitet igennem studier af de bevægelige elementer, sol, vind og vand.

Tre perioder med paradigmatiske skift studeres gennem litteratur relateret til naturfænomener og arkitektur. Antikken afslører en indsigtsfuld forståelse af forandringer og bevægelser i stof, figurativt udtrykt i tilbagevendende metaforer om floder. I renæssancen var idealet at vedligeholde en balance for at opnå et evigt forår. Og i modernismen udtryktes kulminationen på årtiers hurtige fremskridt inden for teknologi først ved at befri arkitektur fra dens uundgåelige forpligtelse til at tilpasse sig klimaet ved at lade det dirigere sit eget miljø for dog i sidste ende at overveje, hvordan klimaet kunne frembringe arkitektur der inkluderede miljøet.

Gennem disse studier skitseres en forståelse af tabets kerne, og på denne baggrund udfolder en foreløbig teori om endemicitet sig. Ved at se arkitektur som et fænomen af fast stof indlejret i naturlige fænomener af flydende stof fremkommer muligheden for at overveje arkitektoniske tropismer. Arkitekturen kan, som planter, læses i dens tiltrækninger til miljøet, i dens orientering af elementer i forhold til forskellige kvaliteter i klimaet. Eksempler på vernakulære bygninger udviser, hvordan deres tropistiske mediationer har fremmet en grundlæggende stedsspecificitet. To eksempler undersøges dybtgående; langhuse på Fanø og gasshō zukuri-huse i Shirakawa-go i Japan viser, hvordan forskellige kulturer anvender samme tropisme, i dette tilfælde anemotropisme, til forskellige formål.

CFD-simuleringer viser, hvordan væsker og faste stoffer kan påvirke og dirigere hinanden, og et fysisk eksperiment i den virkelige verden, et camera obscura, beskriver processen og tilblivelsen af endemisk arkitektur. Herved belyses også hvordan stedspecifik endemicitet er afhængig tropismers samspil.

Igennem disse undersøgelser fremkommer refleksioner over det oprindelige problem og hvordan mediering af miljø gennem arkitektur fremtvinger overvejelser af naturfænomener anvendt i positive tropismer i fremtidens endemiske arkitektur. 

English summary 
The study and thesis documents fundamental research into what may be termed architectural endemicity, being the mediation between natural phenomena and architecture. It is an investigation into how they may mutually conduct one another to form buildings of solid matter and climates of fluid matter to engender inimitable site specificity in architecture.

Acknowledging a commonly expressed notion of a loss of architectural sensitivity towards the environment, the study proceeds to seek out the lost and attempt to figure out how to foster a situation for the lost to reemerge in architectural creation through studies of changeable elements, ie Sun, wind and water. 

Three periods of paradigmatic shifts are studied through literature relating to natural phenomena and architecture. The antiquity reveals an acute sensitivity to changes and motions of matter, expressed figuratively in recurring images of rivers. In the Renaissance, the ideal was to foster a controlled eternal equilibrium of spring. And in modernism the culmination of decades of rapid advancements in technology was expressed, at first by liberating architecture from its inevitable obligation to adapt to its climate by letting it conduct its own environment, to eventually considering how the climate might conduct architecture to include the environment.

Through these studies, an understanding of the core of the loss is outlined, and on this, a tentative theory of endemicity unfolds. Seeing architecture as a phenomenon of solid matter embedded in natural phenomena of fluid matter reveals the opportunity to consider architectural tropisms. Architecture might, similar to plants, be read in its attraction to conditions of the environment, orienting its elements towards various features of climate. Examples of vernacular buildings exhibits how their tropistic mediations have fostered profound site specificity. Two examples examined in depth, the long houses of Fanø Island in Denmark and the gassho zukuri houses of Shirakawa-go in Japan, displays how different cultures employ the same tropism, in this case anemotropism to different uses.

Simulations of computational fluid dynamics show how fluids and solids may influence and conduct one another and a real world physical experiment is performed in the shape of a camera obscura to investigate the process and creation of an endemic architecture. Hereby the necessity of the interplay of tropisms to engender endemicity becomes clear.

From this volume of studies emerges reflections on the original problem, and on how mediation of the environment through architecture prompts contemplation on the use of natural phenomena employed in positive tropisms for the endemic architecture of the future