A PERFECT ORDINARY BUILDING

In these pages, we worship ordinary buildings. And I offer to you now the Perfect Ordinary Building. I came upon this on the island of Ios in Greece. Out for a morning walk along the sea, I saw the forms off of the road. As I basically do not respect the concept of trespassing when it comes to a building I want to look at, I walked up the pathway.

As you can see by the above picture, the apparent perfection is immediately visible. The two forms, in nearly identical cladding, are pulled horizontally apart. And they are held together by a long low stone wall cut into the hillside.

I have said, or at least alluded to, what I think is the completely neglected concept of Ordinary Buildings. It is becoming my personal belief that we should be taught architectural design via ordinary buildings rather than the iconic examples that fill all of the architectural textbooks. Grillo, for one, would agree.

So what is so perfect about this example? What makes this building teachable in the same way that The Barcelona Pavilion is taught? A quick itemization as we look at the above photos:
-two rectangular enclosures oriented 90 degrees to each other
-engagement with the stone wall: the left form rests on the wall, while the right form is set just in front of the wall
-roof planes are wafer thin and are essentially flat
-a roofed seating area for humans, which faces the sea
-clear expression of the roof joists, as they extend beyond the siding
-a reed like vertical siding which weathers to a varying degree
-doors, both sliding and hinged, which are completely integrated
-a reed thin exposed column on the left form
-the right form has a vestibule, which is expressed in the slight change in roof planes
-the stone wall is actually bifurcated, so you can go up the landscape within the form
-etc., I’m only scratching the surface

I don’t know how the interior functions. But the, how does, really, the Barcelona Pavilion function? Nobody knows. While I will walk up to a building without permission, I typically have enough tact to not open the doors. At lest not yet.

Now come on! Compare this image of the Barcelona Pavilion with the lower left photo in the set of 4 above. It’s the same design! And wouldn’t we learn more from A Perfect Ordinary Building when compared with the artificial and derived forms of the BP? We all know the answer.

My drawing at the top is two transparent studies on top of each other, drawn across my open Moleskine sketchbook. There is a more or less perspective view. And then a more analytical view of the right and left forms superimposed. I used pencil, permanent felt tip, and watercolor wash.