Keywords

1 Genealogy: The Evolving Concept of Human-Nature Cohabitation

The glasshouse model grew pertinent to early twentieth-century experimentations which cast a special attention on the non-physical aspects of space, connected to thermal comfort, hygiene and concepts of health. These experimentations drew upon prior architectural visions that saw the inclusion of greenery in the all-glass structure whose design, construction and maintenance oscillated between horticulture, architecture and engineering, highlighting issues of environmental management [1,2,3]. The indoor patio or winter garden, which formed an integral part of the modern interior, marked the evolution of the glasshouse from a place of constructing aesthetic experiences to an incubator of novel approaches to the design of the built environment [4].

The phenomenon that saw the hybridization of residential and green spaces continued to manifest itself from the late 1960s onwards, as concerns about the environmental impact of architecture proliferated. Office, university and commercial buildings, such as Cedric Price’s project for a glasshouse in Parc de la Villette in Paris, blended the boundaries between the natural and the manmade (Fig. 1). The latter example incorporated glass-roofed vegetated atria, partly integrated with human activities and equipped with adjustable blinds for indoor heating and ventilation control. The sketch depicts a section of the building permeated by heat, air and energy flows (Fig. 2). It is telling of the then architectural experimentation into new confluences between internal green spaces and program, aspects of air quality and control. Moreover, another stream of experimentation in those days speculated on the definition of ‘artificial ecologies’, drawing on the glasshouse as the replica of another, ideal and constant climate, in search for a symbiotic relationship between human and non-human organisms.

Fig. 1.
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© Cedric Price fonds/Canadian Centre for Architecture)

Cedric Price, Serre (2), upper level plan and longitudinal section, 1988–1990, graphic appliqué film over electrostatic print on paper, mounted on paper with red ink stamp, 29,8 × 42,1 cm. DR2004:0533:004. Canadian Centre for Architecture (drawings

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“I thought of referring to communication networks as something fluid, like water streams, to produce an artificial nature rather than architecture,” Toyo Ito described with reference to the design process of the Sendai Médiathèque (1998–2001) [5]. If modernist architecture allowed for an articulated space between building and landscape, today the boundaries between the artificial and natural, the urban and the sylvan, are folding in, influencing the architectural project. Contemporary housing design projects, which range from Lacaton and Vassal’s Exhibition Hall in Paris (2006) to Baukunst + Bruther’s project for the ZHAW campus in Winterthur (2018) and from Bruther’s Super-L – 150 Housing Units in Eysines (2013) to Atelier Kempe Thill’s winter garden housing project in Amberes (2015), continue to build upon the glazed structure for the cultivation, preservation and display of tender flowers, plants or biomes. They approach the integration of the building envelope with greenery, in a way that the latter engages with human activity.

Fig. 2.
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© Cedric Price fonds/Canadian Centre for Architecture)

Cedric Price, Serre (2), sketch showing adjustable blinds, heating and ventilation, 1988–1990, ink, graphite, white paint and coloured pencil over electrostatic print on heavy yellow paper, 21,1 × 29,7 cm. DR2004:0558:003. Canadian Centre for Architecture (diagram

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From new construction to transformation projects, and from hybrid-use to urban farming buildings, they point to a phenomenon of multinaturalisation of the built environment, in which “green does not stop at a building’s surface: It also penetrates the interior space, to give the impression of living everywhere with nature” [6]. Testifying to the fact that “green additions have taken on various forms that continue to extend perceptions of the term” [7], Penelope Dean makes reference to projects which have set out to bring, through punctual interventions, a positive impact on living space at the scale of the city, such as Atelier Bow-Wow’s Void Metabolism, Emilio Ambasz’s Green Town and Toyo Ito and Associates’ Parque de la Gavia.

In certain cases, as in the work of architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, the glasshouse figure is valued specifically for issues of material efficiency, aspects of comfort and climatic behavior. For the architects, “the potential of technology lies […] in its ability to be reprogrammed and combined with other things” [8], not on its mere reappropriation. In this context, the need to revise traditional means of representation and to connect building with processes that are external to it – the movement of its users, the flow of air, the angle of sunlight, energy flows – comes to the fore, reminding us that environmental sustainability is equally a representational and a design issue. The climatic drawings and section diagrams deployed by numerous projects of architects Lacaton and Vassal allude to the increasingly changing definition of the architectural agency which is not limited to physical and material aspects of space alone.

Under the growing sustainability demands, the union of art and nature in a “continuous sensorium” [9] calls for further theoretical attention. The glasshouse figure intersects with broader discourses on architectural ecologies as “it was the exercise of granting plants hospitality that first created the conditions under which it became possible to formulate a concept of environment” [10]. It resonates with contemporary theories which promote the understanding of the “environment as a shared climate” among humans, plants, and the environment, following German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. For Sloterdijk, the greenhouse concept has nurtured a representation of nature as “non-external, as a housemate in the republic of beings,” in opposition to the theories that regarded the former “an outside force” [11]. The increasing union of art and nature in the “continuous sensorium” of regulated climates may enable a different understanding of nature in the context of design, one which surpasses the dichotomy between “naturalization” and “symbolization” [12] and points to new relations between human and non-human organisms.

Approaching “environmental design as atmospheric,” Sloterdijk “updates the concept of the environment into that of a sensorium, a sphere that is shared” [13], suggesting new forms of togetherness. Such a state reveals, in particular, Sloterdijk’s “concern with examples of intimacy and interiority,” varying from “primitive interhuman and interspecies notions of intimacy” such as biophilic connections to “increasingly large-scale and complex modifications of interiority” such as the control of indoor climate [14]. Sloterdijk focuses a critical attention on the “climatization of the inhabited space” which entails “envisaging the anthropogenic climate in all its thematic intrusiveness” following different degrees of environmental appropriation [15] that ring all the more familiar today as contemporary societies are confronted with the fragility of nature.

It renders explicit the quality, design, and agency of air, after the proliferation of “zones of a carefully manipulated climate, flooded with natural sunlight, overgrown with plants, and populated with humans” which, as cultural theorist Eva Horn remarks, “[represent] artificial atmospheres that experiment on the artificiality of nature itself” [16]. As the boundaries between nature and artifice are increasingly folding in, attention shifts away from static forms and solid volumes and is guided towards the design of envelopes, spaces of flows, and atmospheres with the aim to bridge quantitative and qualitative design criteria.

2 Pedagogy: Addressing Collective Housing Design as an Interface Between the Natural and the Manmade

Framed by these premises, the postgraduate design studio titled “The Architecture of the In-Between,” at the School of Architecture, Urban Planning, Construction Engineering (AUIC), Politecnico di Milano, addressed the intermediate space as a new interface between built and natural environments. The studio placed a particular attention on the integration of architecture with nature – of open green spaces in collective housing design – reflecting on its ability to enhance environmental performance, notions of engagement and care. The studio explored how such integration may nurture new critical narratives and foster a critical reflection on the design of spaces for cohabitation in the contemporary city. It recognized in the figure of the greenhouse an opportunity for design experimentation to address current environmental issues and the shift from the physical to the physiological qualities of space, speculating on its future stance.

The first phase of the studio asked students to undertake a case study analysis concerning projects that have problematized the dichotomy between inside and outside. The notion of inhabiting spheres of different environmental qualities, in a state of co-presence, coevolution, co-breathing between human and non-human organisms, suggests the construction of “an environment of relationality and interrelational movements” [17]. The tracing of a genealogy of collective housing projects which have addressed the open space, landscape and natural environment in an explicit manner, revealed an evolving and multifaceted building typology, while challenging students to contemplate such integration in connection with contemporary social and ecological issues. It drew a novel attention to the character of liminal spaces, such as loggias, terraces, winter gardens, glazed atria and galleries, inherent to modernist and contemporary projects which have attempted to define more efficient, sophisticated, non-mechanical means for environmental control. The resulting case study atlas (Fig. 3) underpinned a critical comparative analysis of design precedents, exploring their potential to generate new conceptual definitions of intermediate spaces.

It reflected the studio’s engagement with design discourses and practices that have interrogated architectural form after performance, coining novel approaches to the relation between aesthetic perception and social concerns. The critical comparative analysis of design precedents led to the tracing of controversial aspects regarding the case studies at stake, embracing the hypothesis that “learning about architecture by mapping controversies can cultivate a specific attention to the performativity of design and can ultimately result in better design” [18].

Fig. 3.
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Case study atlas: floor plan design (selection). “Thresholds. Architecture of the In-Between,” Architectural Design Thematic Module, Architecture of Interiors Design Studio (section B), AUIC School, Politecnico di Milano, a.a. 2022–23.

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The impressions from the studied project were then integrated into a conceptual collage-manifesto: one of the adopted analytical tools, alongside processes of redrawing, schematic representation, photographic documentation and writing. The collages highlighted the manifold declinations of spaces of sequence, transition, and continuity between public and private, natural and artificial domains (Figs. 4 and 5). They addressed in-between spaces as zones in their own right, which organize transitions between the respective domains, pointing to the conceptualization of architecture as an articulated system of mediation with open boundaries. Crossing between historical precedents analysis and design speculation, the design studio was practiced in its ability to offer “a productive environment to conduct research, by engaging in wide-ranging networks, adapting seemingly determined technologies, and testing didactic structures and methodological approaches” [19].

The deployed tools included but were not limited to archival research, on-site surveys, observation, graphic representations and concept mapping, conceiving of the studio environment as “a workshop, a platform for debate, a synthesizer of ideas and concepts, as it takes advantage of the expertise of a wide range of individuals and fields of interest” [20]. The design proposals then set out to explore potential future scenarios of high-density dwelling which integrate the exterior open space as an integral part of the domestic environment (Figs. 6 and 7). Focusing on the definition of skins, filters, membranes and surfaces, the adopted studio method raised awareness among students about the relational dimension of architecture and the need to re-think patterns of cohabitation in the contemporary city.

Fig. 4.
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Efimova A., Mijatov D., Vennitti J.M., Vujinovic K., Case study: manifesto – Francis Soler, ‘Suite Sans Fin’, rue Durkheim, Paris (1994–97). “Thresholds. Architecture of the In-Between,” Architectural Design Thematic Module, Architecture of Interiors Design Studio (section B), AUIC School, Politecnico di Milano, a.a. 2022–23.

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To address the issue of design for sustainability, what emerges as important is our relationship to natural objects rather than their understanding as performative apparatuses in support of our increasingly regulated environments. It involves developing design proposals which do not merely attempt “to mitigate a building’s impact on natural systems, but [which seek], at least rhetorically, to become a part of those systems” [21], suggesting new hybrids between architecture and nature. The studio outcome ultimately set out to explore the implications into form, space and materiality that such notion entails. The various recent intersections between biology and building nurture the belief that “the concepts of nature and architecture are not separable but linked. The binary opposition between the natural and the artificial is increasingly called into question, conceiving of plants, flowers, and biomes as central elements of new design scenaria: “nature is just as designed as design is natural; life is planned in the same way that the plan is something alive” [22]. In such a context, architecture is not solely to be understood as the theory and practice of a singular building or the spatial design of our environment, but extends to encompass design, planning and visualisation of politics, economy, environment, future and human life in general” [23].

Fig. 5.
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Bayraktar B.N., Garre A.C., Saison L.I., Yesilyurt A.H., Case study: manifesto – Angelo Mangiarotti, ‘La Balossa’, Monza, (1972). “Thresholds. Architecture of the In-Between,” Architectural Design Thematic Module, Architecture of Interiors Design Studio (section B), AUIC School, Politecnico di Milano, a.a. 2022–23.

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Seen from this perspective, the figure of the glasshouse underlines the urgency of safeguarding natural organisms and environments, enabling us to reimagine architecture as part and as an expression of nature, as something that emerges from within the latter, instead of opposing it. The condition of living together introduces a new understanding of the nature-culture oppositional relationship, fostering novel definitions of form, performance and aesthetic perception. Under the growing sustainability demands, the notion of aesthetics addresses “the relationship between sensory perception (the subjective) and quantifiable measures (the objective), and furthermore, they address the role of architectonics in informing the relationship between the expression of material culture and the environment” [24]: it emerges as “a discipline of reflecting on art as mediation between culture and nature” [25]. Initially a place for contemplation and retreat from the industrialized city, the glasshouse figure emerges today as a multifaceted design notion, as an operative and symbolic subject matter alike. In a context that sees design for sustainability lacking paradigmatic icons, revisiting the glasshouse as a symbol of a new aesthetic perception connected to collective housing may hold the key in establishing new connections between green objects and buildings. It re-affirms the need to define new means of aesthetic expression mediated through the project. It points, on the one hand, to a design stance which associates nature with the animation of culture and its symbols and which addresses, on the other, issues of environmental performance and the fragile ecosystems on which our living spaces depend.

Fig. 6.
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Anversa A., Köhn M.K., Lo Vecchio J., Vignotti M., Project: section and elevations. “Thresholds. Architecture of the In-Between,” Architectural Design Thematic Module, Architecture of Interiors Design Studio (section B), AUIC School, Politecnico di Milano, a.a. 2022–23.

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Fig. 7.
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Albin J., Morozova P., Pernot M.J.E., Rodríguez C.W.L., Veeramuthaiah N., Project: axonometric and elevation. “Thresholds. Architecture of the In-Between,” Architectural Design Thematic Module, Architecture of Interiors Design Studio (section B), AUIC School, Politecnico di Milano, a.a. 2022–23.

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