Form and Function, Order Indefinite

Unscrupulous architects notwithstanding, structure is critical in the construction of a building. If a building collapses in on itself, it is completely useless. Not only that, but it cost a significant amount of resources to construct and will cost even more to repair. Even worse, there is the potential that in the action of collapsing inhabitants of the building were injured or beyond. In short, nobody wants a building to collapse without very good reason, none the least of which being the architect of said building.

Girders and trusses and the like keep the roof of the Irwin Indoor Practice Facility from falling in

In the case of the buildings we looked at, the structural systems of the buildings largely followed their functions. In all of Huff Hall, the Indoor Practice Facility, and the Armory, the roof slopes in some way to be highest in the very middle, so that players shooting basketballs or hitting volleyballs or throwing footballs or soldiers firing arms or what-not would not be impeded by (or destroy) the roof. To accomodate this, the Armory has its powerful joists connected by a single pin in the middle. Huff Hall, despite its pillars that impede view of the floor from particular angles, follows suit with its support system above the floor as well.

Irwin does this as well, though a little differently. Whereas the Armory's and Huff Hall's structural systems (again, aside from those pesky pillars) seem to be designed more or less to follow the usage of the building and not a whole lot else, Irwin's structural system adds a new constraint. In order to keep the building from appearing like a large wall between the sports areas and the art and law buildings across the street, the architect had to find a design that still allowed for a sloping roof but sloped so severely at one end of the long axis that it was not very high. In fact, they actually sort of designed around one half of a fairly large dome, with the center near or at the end of the building closer to Memorial Stadium and the rest cut off by the wall on that side.

The main joists near the center of the "fairly large dome" that Irwin forms half of.

Thus, the architect of Irwin modified the form of the building not only to follow its utility but the psychological effect it would have on the surrounding area. Form follows function, both intentional and not. Of course, there's a little more to it than that; legend has it that, viewed from the sky, the ridge down the center of Irwin that the main joists work to form make the building look like a football (the ridge makes the lacing, while the slope of the roof gives the general shape of the top of a football). Accounting for that, form and function blend together in a clever ambiguity. The architect all but certainly designed the building to have a sloping roof in order that people could play ball inside without the roof getting in the way, but they also used this requirement cleverly to make the design something a little special too. Form still follows function, but muddied up a bit. I just wish I could find an aerial picture of the building to see whether or not it really is true.

More than Bread and Circuses

Sorry, no pictures today!

Architecture, we supposed, is concerned with three things: durability, utility, and beauty. It's fairly simple to talk from a subjective view about the beauty of a building; there's a lot to it that can be spoken objectively, yes, but ultimately that judgment comes down to a person's opinion. Durability, too, is relatively simple to talk about; does the building collapse upon itself? If not, it's probably pretty good. Utility, on the other hand, is a little trickier.

Really, this is kind of strange, if you think about it on the surface level. By definition, a building's entire purpose of existence should be for its utility! Durability is critically important, of course, but thinking in the short term an unscrupulous architect might not concern themselves too much with that. Beauty, too, is important but can, in a pinch, be laid aside. Just look at Soviet-era construction. Those buildings were, on the whole, hideous. They were largely ugly on an existential level; just being in eyesight of them makes me less happy, but they still stand, and are still in use in places.

But, the trick is, the building's utility is not necessarily obvious from its appearance. We have some conventions and styles that are obvious, like the idea of a dome to bring people together, but others are less so, like the atriums I discussed in Beckman Institute. And even those had clearer intentions than something like the bridges in TBH. And, even then, these are simply the utility of the floor plans. So much more goes into helping a building to accomplish its many goals.

For one, people like to be warm, but not too warm. So, we have a system of heaters on the windows to keep the cold from getting too far into the building, and a series of pipes to feed into heaters or to help cool the air in individual rooms. The air is cycled through the building, so it doesn't feel stale to the people inside. Water is drained off the roof so it doesn't cave in. There's a system in place in TBH just so people can easily change the light bulbs above the giant atrium!

For a building to successfully have built up its utility, ideally what people will notice is that everything is how they expect it to be or want it to be. Or, alternatively, they do not notice that anything is wrong. The building's greatest achievements could go entirely unnoticed by its patrons by design. There's more to architecture than just making pretty things that are large enough to walk through. It's that, sure, but it's also the composition of so many invisible things that make the building actually usable. A tree fort can be a very delightful thing to look at on its own, but it becomes a true feat of architecture when you somehow manage to rig it so that it supplies more than just shelter and rustic charm.

Building the Fourth Wall

Our tour of Krannert was wonderful and enlightening, of course, but I'd like to save myself from the ordeal of explaining the whole thing again. If you'd like, I do have more pictures, so feel free to get in contact with me if you wanted to see them, but really I'd like to just talk about one very impressive room and it's importance to the building as a whole.

In media, we talk about the idea of the fourth wall as a symbolism for the presence or absence of metafiction in a text. The idea itself comes from theater. Imagine, if you will, a play set in a room. We know that rooms tend to have four walls, one in each direction, but on a stage, we see only three. There's the back wall, and the walls to the left and right, but the fourth is missing. The fourth is presumed to be there, but it forms the window between the world of the play and the world of the audience. There is a clear divide between the two sides, and to break the fourth wall (to introduce to the audience the knowledge that what they see is less apart from their world than they might think) is to smash this divide. But, typically, this divide is held.

Really, Krannert holds true to this divide throughout the entire building. On the main floor, where the audience mingles and uses the restroom and grabs a snack, is one world. However, an entirely different world exists below their feet, where the stages and, more importantly, the staging areas are. And, at the very center of this otherworld lies the Scene Shop.

A visitor's first view into the Scene Shop

The scene shop is where production teams build the sets for the productions to be held. It's, by its nature, a very large room, and very colorful. Whereas other such industrial-inspired spaces might be more drab or simple, the Scene Shop seems almost to bring the very energy of a production into itself in order to spawn the setpieces like the replicator from Star Trek.

Decorations under construction or waiting to be moved to their proper stages adorn the walls

To the left, a giant space for canvases that can be hydraulically lifted and dropped makes painting pieces easier

The room embodies the ideal for a creative space, a space to be occupied by people intending to work creatively. Decorations under construction hanging from walls make both convenient storage places and colorful distraction from the gray of the walls and ceiling. The warm colors of the wooden workspaces help as well. As can be seen two pictures up, power lines hang all but haphazardly above work areas to be as simple to engage with as possible. The room is designed, from its mechanical systems to its aesthetics, to be a generation point for creativity.

The floor is special, too; supposedly, the room lies on its own foundation, so work is never interrupted, even during shows

The room is marked important by its structure as well. It lies in the center of the underworld of Krannert, with access to every stage, so that transport of setpieces built inside is possible. It is the heart of the building. As our guide explained, the room is even built on a separate foundation from most of the rest of the building (she explained that one of the theaters, the Studio Theater, I think, shares the foundation, but otherwise separate from nearly everything). This is so that production teams may work anytime. If there's a show going on, the noise and vibrations from the shop won't disrupt it. There are never noise complaints from audiences above, let alone sleeping residents of ISR or apartments next door. In nearly every way possible, this one room is signified to be significant in the design of the building. After all, how easy would it be to hold a play without a set? Possible, certainly (Shakespeare did it that way), but not desirable. The Scene Shop is the heart of Krannert, pumping important nutrients (decorations) to every limb (theater).

A Nod to the Past

A brief aside about columns, since I didn't really offer any substantive thought in my rush to win the race last week.

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Picasso

It should go without saying that the past is all around us. After all, the instant after something happens, it's already there. But, really, the past is inescapable. Just look at all those old Facebook posts you made in middle school. You could delete those now that you realize how cringe-worthy they were, but is anything really gone on the internet? Probably not. So, what are we left to do? Consign ourselves to this appalling fate? Or, rather, might we revel in it, own up to what was before, and move on?

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not asking all of you to dig up your most embarrassing posts and relive them just to prove some point about "getting past the past." But, rather, when we think about the moments before right now, we needn't worry about trying to erase everything the minute they are out of date. After all, a majority of the past doesn't exist on Facebook. A majority of the past doesn't even involve you!

The past is a sort of bank of ideas, that it only requires the power of memory to pull from and apply to something new. Think about the Picasso quote above. What he's saying is that good ideas come from people rehashing something from that bank. In fact, all ideas do! It's impossible to keep from doing it. There's nothing new under the sun. Every idea has some basis in something that came before. However, the best ideas come from somebody stealing from that bank, making the idea so fully theirs that its original thinker can no longer even control it.

What does all this have to do with columns, though? I do drag on, I'll admit, but what I'm getting at is the notion of homage. Paying respects. Making a nod to the past in new endeavor. Why do people pay homage, really? You could trot out that old notion of doing it as honorific to the people who came before you. That is, to quote more dead folk, "If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants" (-Sir Isaac Newton). We want to give our due respects before we take singular credit for something; everybody deserves their fair share. Or, perhaps, it's more of an idea of transparency, saying that this is somebody who influenced me and I want everybody who looks at what I've done to see that. Again, giving credit to those who accidentally involved themselves in a project by doing something before.

But, I think we can see something more playful in the act of homage than any of that. Have you ever heard the wilhelm scream in a movie? You almost certainly have, though you may not realize it. Editor after editor have cut it into their movies, and not because it represents some "ideal of screaming." Neither is it just to pay honor to the movie it came from, a 1951 western called Distant Drums. Instead, it's the filmmakers sharing a sort of joke with each other, the unofficial badge of honor it is to recognize and hide in your work the thing that has popped up in over 200 different films and TV shows today. It's the same with the Konami code, a cheat code popularized in the video game Contra (because the game was next to impossible without it). It started as a necessary piece of testing software that was meant to be removed upon release, and now it exists in a plethora of games and websites wishing to show off a joke to be made that only a select few might understand.

So, back to the point, the columns around campus. Clearly, due to the select nature of columns (only 5 orders), any usage of them is implicit homage. You can't not know where it's coming from. But, did the architects who built them intend them as some sort of architect in-joke, pieces of trivia to be doled out in field trips? Well, no, not exactly. But they aren't merely saying that all good ideas come from the Greeks, either.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture on hand of the columns gracing the entrance to Lincoln Hall, so you'll have to take my word on the descriptions, but see for yourself another time. They are, for lack of a better word, a little funky. They have a base, and a sort of capital with no volutes, and so are probably best described as Tuscan, but, they look a little off. For one thing, the capitals aren't the geometric paragons of perfection we see on buildings like Talbot Lab or Uni High. Instead, they are, in a sense, half there. The capital is formed by this round piece with a jagged edge, that juts in and out around the circle. It's not typical, for sure.

So why do it? Well, it conveys two ideas. One, the notion of the past kept alive, in the sense that the column can be described as Tuscan. But, more importantly, two, the notion of change. It's not insignificant that Lincoln Hall was very recently renovated. Walking inside, we see the grand entrance that feels like a temple, right next to a much more contemporary looking sitting area for lounging and working in. The columns on Lincoln Hall tell us both that the past is upheld, but that we seek to try new things with it as well.

And so it goes with the columns all around campus, though less obviously. There is the grand impression that the knowledge to be passed down in the halls so magnificently adorned by these great pillars is ages-old. However, no knowledge is perfectly right forever. Even Newton, quoted above, was wrong about things, though less so than those who came before him. And that is the second meaning of the columns, the more jokey-joke reason behind them. We want to show off how we can work these old things into our new designs. We want to show off how we can rework those old ideas of people like Newton or Descartes and make something new, worthy on its own. There is the past, yes, but also the idea of the future.

Cody Simpson, Tristan Gurtler / Tuscan

Found in front of Clark Hall. Tuscan because of capital at top combined with base at bottom.

Cody Simpson, Tristan Gurtler / Ionic

Found in front of Foellinger Auditorium. Ionic because of volutes at top of column (along with skinnier, taller nature).

Cody Simpson, Tristan Gurtler / Composite

Found in front of Natural Resources Building. Composite because of the combination of the volutes (Ionic) and of the vines/plant-like design at the top (Corinthian).

Cody Simpson, Tristan Gurtler / Corinthian

Found in front of Bergin Memorial Hall (at Newman Center). Corinthian because of ornate leaf-like structure at top instead of capital or volutes.

(Also, the very front of Newman Center has these squared-off pillars similar to a Corinthian column)

Cody Simpson, Tristan Gurtler / Doric

Found in front of Illini Union. Doric because of capital at top but no base (also, a little fatter and squatter than, say, an Ionic).