菲利普斯埃克塞特空间站/phillips exeter space station

耶鲁大学设计训练/yale university school of architecture
指导老师/studio critic: sunil bald

项目要求：改变一座建筑的设计元素进而使之成为一座新的建筑
task: to transform the critical design elements of a building and turn it into a new building

设计策略：
路易 · 康设计的菲利普斯埃克塞特学院图书馆有着十分“狡谐“的里外关系。建筑拥有砖结构的外立面，这让图书馆从尺度和风格上看都与校园里其它建筑并无太多二致。但是在建筑内部，一个大于砖块尺度的混凝土结构主宰着建筑真正的空间与气质。整座建筑由混凝土结构托起，在中庭，四片有巨大正圆形开口的实墙给空间带来无限接近宗教的意味。在功能排布上，书架放在接近建筑中庭的地方，阅览书桌被布置在靠近外立面的窗边。整座图书馆的结构、形式、功能无不体现出了一种空间上的等级渐变：建筑的四周是日常的，越接近中心，越朝向与日常的脱离。

这次分析学习基于菲利普斯埃克塞特学院图书馆这一特有的空间特点出发，试图通过反转这一系列的里-外关系，测试空间品质会发生什么样的变化。

这里呈现的图片是对测试结果的一种解读。正圆形的几何巨构一下子把这座建筑带入了超越空间与时间的尺度。同时，这座结构是具有充分自主特性的，它几乎十字对称，仿佛不受方向坐标以及引力的限制。当它原本内向的宗教性被挪至外部，我们被迫需要寻找一个更为庞大的环境体系来支撑，因此有了太空中的菲利普斯埃克塞特空间站。

这次分析学习让我对康在设计菲利普斯埃克塞特学院图书馆时所怀有的顾虑和思考有了更深体会。

approach and objectives:
Louis Kahn’s Phillips Exeter Academy Library is superb in the way it deals with the transfer from the outside to the inside. Situated on a campus where the majority of the buildings are built out of Georgian style, the library is cladded with a brick facade not too different from its neighbors. The interior, however, is carried and defined by a concrete structure stretching all the way from the basement to the roof, forming a quasi-religious space filled with large Euclidean geometries. The Exeter Library offers a procession from the everyday to the sacred. It displays a distinct spatial hierarchy from its periphery to the core. 

Fascinated by the progressional quality of the space, this project was set out to test what if the spatial hierarchy was reversed with Kahn’s library - what kind of space would it turn into if the concrete structure becomes the facade, and the facade becomes the core? 

The images are but one interpretation of the result. To me the power of the circular opening signifies something exists beyond space and time. The fact that the building is striped of any orientation or indication of gravity further invites us to put this new building into an environment that is time- and gravity-less. 

This study made me appreciate even more what Kahn has done designing the Exeter Library.