Posted on 06 April, 2005 Talking Sheds By Denise Scott Brown Architecture's communicative function was disregarded throughout the first half of the twentieth century. During the 1950s, Robert Venturi and I independently developed a strong interest in it. In the mid 1960s, we looked for a site where we could study architectural communication somewhat separately from architecture's other functions and away from complex urban patterns that would make the communication systems less clear. We found it in the Nevada desert on the Las Vegas strip. The idea of the building as a shed with communication on it has influenced all our work but particularly our civic buildings. The changeable nature of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) permits quick shifts in communication, almost as events happen. Electronic banners have the same immediacy as flags or flowers. They stand in contrast to the masonry of the buildings, much as the blossoms on the altar stood against the thousand-year-old temple, and they permit an immediacy and variability of urban communication that would astound architectural propagandists of earlier eras, who incised their messages in stone. A question for the future might be whether architects will be prepared to surrender the creative tasks of symbolic communication via architecture to the graphic artists who design the LED messages. Will we (or our clients) want this major element of the building to be expressed through a medium that is innately not subject to control? Will we abrogate, to this extent, our own expressive and decorative needs — needs that eventually led us away from the abstractions of modernism? Will designing the shed and the frame that holds the decoration be enough for us? Functional Relationships in Design Two logics of functionality — one of the immediate users, the other of the broader community — must be satisfied in any design. Resolving the issues that arise where they meet is much of the fun. One process for defining functional relationships is to understand the patterns of activity around the site and to relate them to the activities to be housed in the buildings. These ideas are illustrated in our design for the Hôtel du Département de la Haut Garonne, Toulouse, France. This complex is an administrative center for a provincial government. The American equivalent would be a state capitol. The functional requirements are largely for administrative space and agency offices, where citizens and organizations can conduct their business with regional government. The project includes the legislative Salle de L'Assemblée and some unusual public uses such as a child care center. Beneath the complex is parking. There is need for formal space outdoors as well as in, and for entry places for the public arriving by foot or car. The site, within an old commercial and residential area and adjoining a new commercial node to the south, has access from the Avenue Serres, an old urban arterial; from a bridge, the Pont des Minimes over the Canal du Midi; and from smaller perimeter roads. Our first decisions were around urban functional relationships. We placed a pedestrian way diagonally across the site, linking the bridge over the canal to the area of renewal to the south. Along this way we placed the two wings of the complex. This allowed both ends of the buildings to be accessible to pedestrians from local streets. A park is on the canal side. Access points from the perimeter of the site lead to the deputies' entrance and the underground parking. The child care center on the ground floor is accessible to a protected garden. The street through the site widens at midpoint to form a crescent-shaped plaza, giving public entry to the Salle de L'Assemblée on one side and the departmental offices on the other. There is place for sitting at its center and dark, cool shade under colonnades at its edges. Within the buildings, most of the spaces are administrative offices. Links between the two wings are made via multistory glassed corridors, passarelles, that cross the pedestrian street at either end of the central space and link with the central corridors of the wings. At the links we placed coffee corners. At the center of the wing containing the assembly hall is a multistory Hall d'honneur, which lights the building lobby, ties corridors together, and serves as a focal space for office workers in both wings. The assembly hall is the center of a complex of spaces, serving the public, the deputies, and the president of the département. A processional route leads from the deputies' entry to the Salle des Pas Perdus and the Salle de L'Assemblée. Below is a deputies' restaurant and a space where the building's 1,500 occupants can assemble to be addressed by the president. Revisiting Expectations The street is both a ceremonial place and a shortcut. We hoped people would use it as part of the pathway system of the city. I hoped too that, in the Toulouse tradition, our public way would acquire an open-air market. It turns out that the public and particularly schoolchildren do take shortcuts via our diagonal. Sadly, market stalls are not permitted in the civic space, although civic functions are. A market does occur, however, inside the building — an informal market in fruit and produce takes place in the parking structure, along the routes where people pass to the elevator. So the building generates what we had envisioned, and in a logical spot, even if not quite where we had hoped. To my surprise, shortly after the building opened, I saw our assembly hall on television in Geneva. It was the setting of a press conference announcing the introduction of a new Airbus construction project in Toulouse. Although designed as a legislative chamber, its form had generated an extra function. Defining Functions and Functionalism We have seen that the definition of functionalism has wide ramifications and can be extended in many directions; that functional change is pushed by change in the social, technological, and urban dimensions of our world; and that these, in turn, exert demands on buildings to accommodate changing activities over time. Cogent issues of definition remain: function in architecture is defined by whom, for whom, and when? Who decides what is functional or which functions to fulfill? These ultimately political questions suggest that social and community concerns and values be taken into account when building programs and functions are discussed — especially as we move from the face-to-face client to unknown "users" represented by statistics and by institutional or agency clients. This brings up questions of scale and aggregation: who decides about function, at which scales? Society exercises controls on building in various ways and at different scales, from the region to the room. Whose obligations on us shall apply at which level, where, and when? And who has the right to decide on function for the future? Architects have rich thoughts on function and functionalism derived from their experiences, but I have not seen these codified. I have attempted my own codification. The complexity of the concept of function in architecture results in a lack of clarity in the definition. And I have made things worse! But the debate on functionalism and how to define it should be more broadly based and more sophisticated than it is now in architecture. Denise Scott Brown is principal, with Robert Venturi, of Venturi Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia, one of the world's premier architecture and planning firms. Since the 1960s, their ideas and built work have influenced generations of architects, worldwide. This article is excerpted from Architecture as Signs and Systems for a Mannerist Time by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, published in December 2004 by Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2004 by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Used by Permission. All rights reserved. © 2005 Artifice, Inc. - All Rights Reserved http://www.ArchitectureWeek.com/2005/0406/design_1-1.html   The Hôtel du Département de la Haute-Garonne is a provincial administrative center in Toulouse, France, designed by Venturi Scott Brown and Associates. Photo: GrandRond Photography North elevation of the Hôtel du Département de la Haute-Garonne. There was need for formal space outdoors and for entry places for the public arriving by foot or car. Photo: Matt Wargo for VSBA Ground floor plan of the Hôtel du Département de la Haute-Garonne in Toulouse, France, designed by Venturi Scott Brown and Associates. A pedestrian way across the site is flanked by the two wings of the complex. Image: VSBA The street through the site widens at midpoint to form a crescent-shaped plaza, giving public entry to functions on both sides. Photo: Matt Wargo for VSBA There is space for sitting at the inner plaza's center and dark, cool shade under colonnades at its edges. Photo: Matt Wargo for VSBA Within the buildings, most of the spaces are administrative offices. Photo: Matt Wargo for VSBA Links between the two wings are multistory glassed corridors, passarelles, that cross the pedestrian street at either end of the central space. Photo: Matt Wargo for VSBA At the center of the wing containing the assembly hall is a multistory Hall d'honneur. Photo: Matt Wargo for VSBA The assembly hall is the center of a complex of spaces, serving the public, the deputies, and the president of the département. Photo: Matt Wargo for VSBA Architecture as Signs and Systems for a Mannerist Time. Image: Harvard University Press