This article was first published on the WeChat public account "Feng Lun Feng Ma Niu"
Because I was used to it, I never saw it. This phenomenon is known in psychology as a "spatial blind spot". There are countless blind spots in everyday spaces, and the most overlooked should be the roof of the building.
Tracing the course of modern cities, a specific and subtle perspective is the rise and fall of the roof of the building. The Dutch settled in New York for the first large-scale construction, "with a group of traditional Dutch houses with mountain-shaped roofs on each side of the river, which created the illusion that attempts to transplant Amsterdam to a new horizon had been a resounding success." Koolhaas wrote in Mad New York.
The same thing happened in Beijing on the process of modernization.
▲ The Chang'an Avenue plan in 1964 did not have the current large roof
In 1964, the city of Beijing had a rarely mentioned plan. The plan is expected to cover both sides of Chang'an Avenue with a unified architectural style before 1969. Without the Cultural Revolution, Chang'an Avenue would have been a different face. If it were really filled with a style, even if it was all Soviet, it would be spectacular.
Later, the planning plan was rejected, but a compromise was taken, and the buildings on both sides of Chang'an Avenue were to be covered with large Chinese roofs, a compromise that shaped the current Chang'an Avenue.
Today, the original mountain roof has become a rare monument in New York, and modern society has a new understanding of the roof. Tradition and modern thought are different, and the way of dealing with similar problems is also different. Modern cities no longer accept essentialist expressions, subverting the logic of space in form. Chicago, rebuilt in 1871, is a model of a flat-roofed new city.
Chicago is a completely flat-roofed city
When looking back at tradition, on the roof one finds the most significant distinction between tradition and modernity: the slope and flatness of the roof. Both In china and the West, the sloped roofs of ancient cities have an absolute advantage, the only exception is the Middle East and North Africa region, because of dryness, little rain, and heat, so the roofs are made flat, and they also have the use of cooling at night.
From oblique to flat, it shows a completely different growth logic of the city itself. The traditional pitched roof is just to be seen, to be Mobike, its beauty hides order, and its curves contain stiff tension. In the modern metropolis, with the exception of a few skyscrapers towering minarets competing with each other for the elegant and solemn skyline, most of the flat roofs provide a new foothold for people to look down on their homes and understand the city as a whole, including its boundaries and limitations.
▲ Bird's eye view of the city's rooftop bar
The construction of any form of human habitation means sacrificing another form. If a building is defined as a shelter, it is defined on the basis of its roof.
For more than 100 years, planar concrete roofs have become the dominant form of construction. To this day, we are used to this urban landscape. There is even unlimited vitality excavated from the flat roof. Rooftop restaurants, rooftop pools, rooftop gardens, rooftop bars, rooftop camping, rooftop farms, rooftop sports fields, etc., flat roofs have become miniature versions of the new urban legend.
The Fast and furious series of films, each of which ends with a family reunion scene, the eighth of which is moved to the roof garden of a new York skyscraper.
▲ "Fast and Furious 8" | Roof garden for family gatherings
In 1926, the modernist master Le Corbusier first elaborated on the new "five points of architecture" for the design of The Meyer Villa, which included the ground floor overhead, roof garden, free plane, horizontal long window, and free façade.
The German philosopher Jaspers believed that "in the hierarchical order of the real world, the most precious thing is the spirit." In order to promote the new spirit of urban creation, Le Corbusier dismantled and reconstructed urban space. The five sides of a building must be independent and free, the classical sloped roof is a fence, to lift the inhibition, to smooth out the edges and corners, the city must be prepared for higher wisdom, higher reality.
The roof garden came into being, but in his understanding, the roof garden did not point to a specific garden, but reminded the roof to participate in the march of the city.
He pointed out that "reinforced concrete brings a free plane to the dwelling, and the layers are no longer overlapped according to the load-bearing wall, they are free." The precise use of every square centimeter will bring huge savings in construction volume."
"Precise use of every square centimeter" is the most thorough instrumental rationality, the most warm good intention. He expressed the position that urban space should be used to the fullest.
The earliest proponents of the "roof garden" were not bound by the concept, and from the beginning, Le Corbusier regarded the roof as a new stage in the city. He designed the Marseille apartment, which has a swimming pool, children's playground, theater space, gymnasium, etc. on the roof, and a 200-meter-long runway, and he compares the roof with various functional spaces to the deck of a large cruise ship, where people experience floating over the city.
▲ Corbusier-designed Marseille apartment
Although the roof looks like a simple shell, we can open it up to the interior of the building and integrate it with the community. The roof is no longer a cold image, but an aerial backyard where you can push the door in.
In his dialogue with university students, Le Corbusier likened the architectural space to the melody of the symphony, and the nodes in the building were interpreted as different rhythms as the footsteps moved, "the footsteps lead us to all corners, let our eyes enjoy the enclosed walls, or the distant scenery, open the expected or unexpected doors for us, and show us the unexpected space."
Under the guidance of footsteps, go to physical examination of the spatial order and functional division of the building. The German writer Schoenberg strongly advocated the movement of climbing stairs in his book "Poor and Tasteful". He has praised the singer Madonna's habit of climbing stairs, and every time she tours, she hardly uses the hotel's gym, but spends fifteen minutes going up and down the stairs. If such a climbing movement can be extended to the roof, then climbing the stairs is like a piece of music, and the roof becomes the climax, a sense of ascension that has seen the sky again after hardships.
As Louis Kang put it, "The building itself should consist of two buildings—one external and one internal," giving the building a separate but interconnected role."
"Exterior architecture" is the most frequently used in the film. Most action movies have scenes of rooftop chases, and it seems that without running on the roof, it cannot be regarded as a real escape and redemption.
The roof in the action movie already has a certain paradigm, so that the chase that takes place in the building, people have to run up, as if everyone knows it, open the door of the roof, and then there is the world of freedom. Although sometimes what awaits on the roof is doom.
From tradition to modernity, urban space, in essence, shifts from stillness to movement. Because the traditional space is ceremonial, is fixed-point to see and be seen, from one point to another point of regular movement, the line is constant. Modern space, on the other hand, sprinkles all the movements of people in the arena evenly over the city and onto rooftops.
After the roof is flattened, the first thing that comes with a philosophical aesthetic is ushered in. As Edmund Burke said, "Beauty is gradually produced by easing the whole solid and straight system." In visual beauty, the aesthetic comes from the effect of relaxing the muscles and feeling smooth, while those rough and stiff objects provoke and sting the sensory organs."
▲The roof garden of the old osaka baseball stadium site was renovated
At the same time, enjoying the flowers, making the moon, eating tea, and watching the scenery on the roof is a reproduction and reproduction of urban life. Running sweating on it is also an experience of great modernity, which not only expands the space of the body, but also further experiences the building itself, which can measure the roof with its feet, heralding the liberation of every square centimeter of the city.
The unceasing footsteps of the heroes in the movie remind me of the rooftop runway of the rooftop no. 2 Primary School designed by the young architect Ruan Hao, although it is only one of many rooftop sports fields, but looking at the photos taken from a distance, I can still feel the flow of space. Flow is the essence of modernity.
▲Roof runway
When we redesign the city with this kind of thinking, the designer's output of land information is no longer a dogmatic floor plan or three-dimensional map, but a consideration of what is necessary for people's health and safety in a particular era. The placement of space should consider both convenience and taste.
If the city is compared to the endless sea, and the roof is the floating archipelago in the sea, this three-dimensional urban view is the complete expression of the modern city. Instead of always struggling with the contradictions between man and land, entangled in plot ratio and building density, it is better to start with the roof and rethink the "precise use of every square centimeter."
At this time, I revisited the three-dimensional city advocated by Chairman Feng Lun for many years.