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Jared Heming
Woofter
Case Studies 333
December 2, 2004
Architecture and Technology:
The Massey Residence
In 1992, Neil Denari designed a residence for a graphic designer in the suburbs
of Los Angeles. The premise for the design was for Denari to explore the basic
conditions of the suburban subdivision through a typical flat site and program.1 Denari’s
response was to develop a house that both acknowledged and disrupted the idea of a
typical suburban home. One of Denari’s concerns in architecture is seeking out
architectural symbols for existing cultural conditions – to create buildings that somehow
directly speak to the cultural factors that surround their existence.2 In all his projects, and
notably in the Massey Residence, Denari chooses to achieve this representation of
culture through very technical strategies – ones that are conducive to both his method of
shaping space and his tectonic ideas. Yet the idea that culture can inform spatial ideas
and organizations can be just as open to questioning as the interpretation of culture that
led to the formation of a space in the first place. Denari statement that cultural ideas are
informing the architecture collapses when one analyzes the architecture itself. In the
Massey Residence, the technology that Denari uses to shape the space stands out as
the essential point. For this reason, his cultural argument becomes subordinate to a new
idea – that Denari uses the technology of modern society to reflect the culture of modern
society.
In the Massey Residence, both the conditions of technology and culture are in
operation. The idea that the home should explore the idea of a suburban home created
both the program that Denari was given and his corresponding response. The site is a
typical 50 ft. by 150 ft. Los Angeles site and the three bedrooms, two bath programs
reflected the surrounding post-war housing stock. Denari realized that this program
stemmed from a post-war idea of family and did not reflect modern conditions. While the
size of the average American family has not changed mush in 50 years, the internal
relations of the typical family have. With higher divorce rates, second marriages, and
general acceptance of a variety of lifestyles the average American home does not
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operate in a manner that is reflected by the suburban home. Hence, the Massey
Residence “sits as an ambivalent figure, committed to the preservation of site typology
while internally engaging in an extreme criticism of architectural similitudes.”3 Denari
achieves this idea by doing two things. He first allows the standard setbacks and ideas
of site to inform the positioning of the house as well as its relation to the street. He also
gives it the typical elements of an open front lawn and bigger, more private backyard
with a swimming pool. Secondly, Denari creates three story house, but sinks it one level
into the ground in order to maintain the standard spatial relationship between the
suburban homes – then he starts to create the culturally informed spaces by developing
the house in section – creating a shearing affect throughout the house by making the
residence a split level home and then pulling out various spaces in a way that the house
maintains no overlying geometry.4 As Denari describes it, “the living experience exposes
the tectonic and constructional aspects of the house and allows the inhabitants to be in
the space being formed as well as to see the shearing effect caused by the stepped floor
plates.”5
Here, Denari highlights an important point. The whole house clearly displays its
underlying structure. The structure is the medium where Denari utilizes modern
technology in order to develop the shearing effect of the house. The house works as a
combination of many structural strategies. Denari describes the structural systems as
such:
Above the garage, the main floor of the house is supported by a discreet steel
assembly that rests on smaller splayed columns and a concrete storage wall.
Across the entrance space, the kitchen, dining, and work areas sit on a concrete
excavation. Two large structural bents in a rounded V-shape in section support
the roof. Running perpendicular to these elements are purlins that stiffen the
frame. The bedrooms are essentially suspended from the structural bents,
reducing the number of columns in the building.6
These structural components constitute quite a complex system of bearing walls, beams,
suspended spaces, and a frame and skin roof. The effect of these structural ideas plus
the shearing produces a complex and technical skeleton.7 In the structural x-ray
renderings that Denari produces in his book, one can clearing see that the Massey
Residence is built of modern materials applied through modern methods. But even when
one sees the building as a whole with walls and skins fully applied the structure is still a
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strong readable element of the house.8 This makes the shearing effect clearly evident as
Denari intended. Yet one then realizes that while the shearing is important, the structural
and technical elements of the house are necessarily needed in order to speak to the
idea that the internal conditions of the house reflect a modern cultural condition. The
relationship between the two elements – culture and structure – shaping the house is not
clearly defined by the architect. For it is conceivable that one could design a house with
internally sheared volumes and spaces using different technical strategies, in addition to
the idea that exposing the structure may or may not be vital to that same idea.
Unfortunately, Denari fails to speak on this in any of this writings. Yet he does to speak
to separate ideas on structure. Denari states that his “methods of working with structural
conditions during the design process can be largely classified as a priori or a posteriori
systems (meaning before or after respectively). The first is usually organized by a gird,
module, or other predetermined pattern . . . the second system is simply manifest as the
postengineered resolution of forces of a conceptual structure.”9
So, in the Massey Residence, one can assume that Denari created a posteriori
structural idea, where he developed the idea of shearing and then designed the spaces
around that same idea; then he designed to structural system to make it work. Yet,
Denari chooses to expose the structure. Which means that structure didn’t act as a
complete afterthought – he mentions that, “the living experience exposes the tectonic
and constructional aspects of the house” - which means that his revealing of the
structure was a strong purposeful act. This could then be read as a logical progression
of the idea that internally, the house would be informed by culture ideas, so one could
argue that the exposed structure relates that in modern society relationships are clearly
visible and how things connect is perfectly understood. Yet now the idea of culture
informing the ideas of the house starts to get muddled.
Now, one can start to question whether the idea that Denari is engaging in an
architecture that is searching for forms that relate to cultural ideas. Or, he is establishing
technical ideas that are strongly rooted in a modern context and then applying these to
buildings. Thus, by using technical ideas so strongly connected to society he is able to
generate cultural references that might not have existed otherwise. There are two
specific renderings that Denari created of the Massey Residence that can highlight an
important idea.10 IN the first rendering Denari places the image of a jet fighter cockpit at
the bottom and in the second he places the image of a car at the bottom. These can
both be viewed in two ways – culturally or structurally. From a cultural standpoint, the
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image of a jet fighter could imply a relationship between the house and the broad cultural
context of America. A nation engaged in global conflicts and one that heavily invests in
technically advanced planes in order to protect its way of life. Therefore, without the
plane the American suburban condition might not exist in the way it now does. Or, one
could read the connection that the plane and the car reflect the technical advancement
of modern society and that the Massey Residence is an architectural work that attempts
to rectify this imbalance. Or, the car and the plane can be seen as technical machines
that people engage in everyday so much so that both are imbedded in the American
culture and that the Massey Residence is an attempt to reflect this experience
architecturally.
All these readings of the photos highlight one important thought that cultural
analysis can be read in many ways. Yet, from a structurally reading there is a direct and
obvious connection between the house, the plane, and the car. The car is built from a
chassis – a metal structure that is light weight and depends on the bending and folding
of metal to create a high strength frame from which to attach a skin that then creates the
space of the car. The plane also works from this structural conception – modern jet
planes are built from lightweight frames with a simple skin built over it. The Massey
Residence contains both a structural frame and skin in its roof. As well as structural floor
plates that read like underlying chassis.
It is beginning to appear that technology plays a stronger generating role in the
production of Denari’s architecture then the search of some cultural symbol. In order to
explore this idea further one must look at other works that Denari has created. One, a
research project for a Monastery in New York City and the other a proposal for the West
Coast Gateway Competition, a series of buildings housing various program elements
designed to reflect and honor the contributions of immigrants to America.11 Both projects
reflect a technical machine aesthetic. In the West Coast Gateway buildings, the
structural decisions are again very technical and complex, with large spanning members
and bracing supports that stretch from the main volume of the building to touch down on
the ground. The monastery reflects a much more solid mass and seemingly less
technical building but the material ideas of the building stand as remaining very modern.
When describing the time frame within which these buildings were created, Denari states
that, “from 1983 to 1992, my work argued for relevance via an autobiographical
positioning of ideas. Since 1992, my interest has shifted from the narrowly focused
machine reference to the broad and open possibilities of cultural conditions not yet
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coded with an architectural symbol.”12 Here Denari clearly states that these works were
informed from a clearly defined technical standpoint – the machine reference. The
Massey Residence was designed in 1994, two years after he states that he began to
shift focus, yet if one reflects on his inclusion of the fighter and the car in his renderings,
he still hasn’t been able to define a culturally coded architectural symbol or form without
including the use of modern technology.
The fact that Denari does not stray from the technical reference point, from which
he began generating architecture, when he begins to create culturally coded forms; can
lead one to the argument that actually, Denari has in effect found something else – the
fact that in modern society where there exists an idea of a global culture and that no
large disparities of technology exist between nations and continents – technology is
imbedded in our very idea of culture. So, in effect Denari has been engaging in a
culturally coded architecture throughout his career he just never thought of it from a
cultural standpoint. In this regard, Denari’s works present themselves as clear and
logical presentations, and cannot be read as an architectural duality consisting of cultural
references and structural decisions. The Massey Residence works as a work that clearly
reflects that option of a dual reading. Where Denari is stating in his text that the house
was informed by culture, but his drawings presented a work that was focused on
creating a very technical house.
The idea that Denari’s use of technology is inherently creating culturally coded
architecture does not weaken his work, but actually clarifies what exactly Denari is
engaging in. He is operating on the modern condition that technology is something that
is integrated in every moment of life. We engage with it everyday. Therefore, using
technology is an inherent trait in modern society. The author, Gasset speaks to this
when he states:
In fact, for many reasons technology today has attained a position among the
integral components of human life which it has never attained before. True, it has
been important enough in all times; witness the historian who, when he tries to
find a common denominator for vast periods of prehistoric time, resorts to the
peculiarities of their technologies, calling the primeval age of humanity . . . the
Eolithic or auroral Stone Age and going on with the Paleolithic or early Stone
Age, the Bronze Age, and so forth. Yet on this list our own time would have to
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figure not as the age of this or that technology, but simply as the age of
technology.13
And to that idea, Denari engages in creating architecture that chooses to rectify
the development of our buildings with the cultural condition of our time – an age where
technology itself describes our culture engagements. One way to do that in architecture
is to create buildings reliant upon a modern technical structure. The Massey Residence
highlights this disparity in our treatment of our buildings. The average suburban home is
still built using wood framing as the structural idea – an idea that dates to the early part
of the nineteenth century.14 And in the last one hundred years, a time of great
technological change we have yet to alter the way in which we build our homes. This
engagement in modern technology poses a problem for Denari’s work. General critiques
of his work state that he is engaging in an architecture that has no grounding – no
source. In this sense, the argument is that he isn’t engaging in anything more then
creating technical architecture simply because he has the ability to do so.15 Yet this can
be dismissed when one focuses on the position of technology in modern society.
Therefore, when Denari states that he is attempting to engage in providing an
architectural symbol for the modern cultural context he has provided grounding.
The interesting thing about this grounding is that technology in modern society
knows almost no bounds. As Gasset states, “Today the engineer embraces as one of
the most normal and firmly established forms of activity the occupation of inventor. In
contrast to the savage, he knows before he begins to invent that he is capable of doing
so, which means that he has ‘technology’ before he has ‘a technology’.”16 If we take this
idea, and apply it to the creation of architecture, it means that there is almost no limit in
terms of technology to the creation of a building. And so that when an architect engages
in a design based on utilizing modern technology, he is in effect embracing something
that contains no limits because he is no longer engaging in a specific and concrete idea,
but rather a methodology that knows no bounds except for an end solution. In essence,
the architect no longer has the option of using wood technology or stone technology.
Instead, he can draw upon the methodology of modern technology that will seek no
limits in what it can accomplish. This is how it becomes possible for Denari to engage in
creating posteriori structural systems that can make possible any design scheme that
Denari decides to create.
In the Massey Residence, where the cultural reference of shearing can manifest
itself in a multitude of means, Denari was able to contain the work with the regulation of
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acknowledging existing site restrictions plus the total shape of the house. The
acknowledgement of the gable end roof as a typical means of shelter a suburban home
give the potential of sheared spaces a bounded volume.17 These restrictions come not
from an idea of culturally reflective architecture but of an acknowledgment of pre-existing
means that exist in the suburban home. So, here the Massey Residence escapes the
potentially significant trap that the engagement of architecture and technology can
create; the fact that without outside restrictions a building can achieve any shape or form
it desires while still theoretically engaging in cultural conditions.
This works off the idea that technology here is working without any conception of
how the building can form because the building form can be invented and the means for
creating that form can also be invented. Here it is important to point out that in this
context the architecture might be very improbable, yet is by no means impossible
according to technology as a methodology. This unbounded architecture now begins to
fulfill the original critique set forth earlier. That this architecture can lack grounding and
therefore, conceivably separate itself from very easily from the viewer. This can be a
specific problem for Denari as an architect, because his general working happens in
academia, a place where the limits of economy and politics and resources do not have
to exist. It begins important to point out that while that potential for boundlessness exists
in how Denari engages architecture and technology it does not mean that he becomes a
victim of it.
Denari’s work operates off the condition in modern society that technology has
been so incorporated into how society functions culturally, simply by engaging
architecture and modern technology together it actually becomes possible to create
buildings with no historical precedence. Where in the past architecture has a relation to
its predecessors in some form, the shift in how technology operates in society as a
presupposed condition, has allowed architecture to dramatically break from its
predecessors. Architecture engaged with technology; despite the inherent condition that
technology is ingrained in modern culture, has the ability to solely engage with
technology in a manner that it becomes nothing more then a relationship in itself. Since
technology knows no potential bounds, architecture can inherit this feature as well.
Therefore architecture engaged with technology has the ability to separate itself very
easily from the cultural grounding it has today.
Gasset relates a story about how culture came to influence architecture in a
profound way.18 When Gasset was writing, Tibet was the foremost land of Buddhism.
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The rise of Buddhism in Tibet provides an interesting example of how an existing cultural
condition gave rise to the architectural form of meditation in Tibet – the monastery. The
Tibetan plateau is a high, fairly inhospitable region. The desires for meditation in
Buddhism gave rise to the construction of monasteries of stone and stucco the local
materials of the area. The existing cultural tradition of the violent Tibetan tribes to seek
shelter in their homes, giving the house a military significance, began to manifest itself in
the creation of Buddhist monasteries. Hence, the Tibetan monastery functioning as a
fortress from both a cultural and architectural standpoint took control of the Tibetan
state.
This becomes an interesting idea when contrasted to Denari’s attempts to use
cultural conditions in creating architecture. In the Tibetan story, there is a direct linear
relationship to how an architectural symbol arose from a pre-existing cultural condition.
In Denari’s work, while he is working off an existing cultural condition, the fact that
technology is imbedded in modern culture, it does not lead to direct architectural
consequence. This is because of the inherent nature of modern technology itself. It does
not manifest itself as a technology but rather a methodology that can result in many
technologies.
Hence, Denari’s work has the potential of many solutions, hence he is in fact
engaging solely in the creation of an architecture that engages only in the technical
possibilities of the modern age. Despite Denari’s arguments that he is interested in
taking culture and applying it to the creation of an architectural form; His work actually
relies on the fact that modern technology – something early in his work began to engage
with – happens to play such a large role in modern culture. Hence, while he makes the
argument that he working on a cultural condition, he has in fact been trapped by the fact
that technology in modern times acts as a methodology. This methodology is more
powerful as an aesthetic and working condition for architecture then any ideas of culture
by itself. And since, culture is so open to interpretation and questioning, technology (with
its latent cultural traits) stands as the more potent idea for generating architecture.
Therefore while Denari does engage in cultural architecture at a certain level, the real
concern of his work happens to be the idea of modern technology as a means for
generating form.
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Neil Denari. “Massey Residence,” Archidose, November 1999,
http://www.archidose.org/Nov99/111599.html
1
2
Neil M. Denari, Gyroscopic Horizons. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. Pg. 8 Also this
relates to the way that Denari chooses to present the building. In his renderings one will notice words and
images not directly related to the architecture itself inset into drawing. For instance, in the Massey
Residence, Denari inserts words like “sun” and “Nintendo” that he associates with suburban life in Los
Angeles.
3
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 67
4
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 68
Longitudinal Section of the Massey Residence clearly demonstrates the shearing of the spaces.
The latitudinal section demonstrates the effect of making the home a split level residence.
5
From the online text at Archidose.
6
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 67
7
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 75-76
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8
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 71-73
9
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 43
10
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 66, 73
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11
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Chronology Section
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12
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 8
Jose Ortega y Gasset, “Thoughts on Technology.” Philosophy and Technology, C. Mitcham, R. Mackay
eds. 1983, 307. Pg. 306
13
14
This stems from my own knowledge base and not a specific source.
15
This comes from a critique written in Metropolis Magazine online, yet the specific website, I was not
able to find again. Yet I still remember the main argument of the article which is what I have written.
16
Gasset, Pg. 311
17
“Gyroscopic Horizons” Pg. 69
18
Gasset, Pg. 302-303
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This reference is simply summarized, for a full comprehension of the overall relationship between man and
technology also provided by the story it becomes necessary to read the whole text.