Architectural Design

1st ProofTitle: BA: Architectural Design

Job No: PD0710-67/3184

Chapter 3 final (3.2)_.qxd:layouts to chapter one 7/27/10 7:59 AM Page 86

The design project

Site, context and place

Interview with Raoul Bunschoten of CHORA

When you first visit a site, are there particular tools or

methods that you favour to record your observations

in the field?

There’s no fixed way of experiencing a site. I think

experiences can come to you in any way. It’s always

important to write and sketch. It’s always good to put your

own subjective observations through some kind of process,

whether it’s with pencil or whether it’s through a few words

or a mark on a map. Then it becomes available to analysis;

it can be turned into knowledge. To communicate you have

to use a language that other people use as well. Ultimately,

if you want to sell your project you will have to explain why

it’s a good thing.

Site analysis is often presented as a study of static

objects, such as the buildings around the site, but you

are more concerned with the identification of mobile

and dynamic phenomena. What can this tell us about

a place?

We live in a world that is natural. You could talk about sea,

earth, ground, the climate and all that’s in motion: some of it

moves very slowly, some of it moves fast. We live on the skin

of the earth. It’s dynamic and it’s complex. Sometimes it

moves very fast: like climate change. The second part of that

concept is the way we live on this earth and I call that second

skin of the earth. Humanity has created a total second skin of

the earth, which consists of houses, cars, cities, information,

infrastructures, oil, gas pipelines. Our second skin and first

skin are both dynamic and they interact with each other

and I think on any site that you go to, you always have to

understand the relationships between these two skins. You

always have to see the big picture, even if it is the long-term

effect of climate change on a particular site or, vice versa, the

conditions of the site. For example, take one small house on

the site. The way that the house is designed, especially the

way that the people manage their energy within that house,

has an effect on the environment; the interplay between

those two dynamic skins. Everything else that looks fixed –

a house, a garden – is only temporarily fixed. That’s where

design has to happen. Design is about orchestrating the

dynamics of the first skin and the second skin.

Project: Tempelhof Energy

Incubator

Location: Berlin, Germany

Architect: CHORA

Date: 2009

This competition entry drawing must

communicate to the judges the

architects’ understanding of the way

that the site will be altered and used

once the design has been

implemented.

Text

1st ProofTitle: BA: Architectural Design

Job No: PD0710-67/3184

Chapter 3 final (3.2)_.qxd:layouts to chapter one 7/27/10 7:59 AM Page 86