邊緣學科：約翰森·施馬林的建筑

作者：卡爾·沃里克（威斯康星大學密爾沃基分校建筑與城市規(guī)劃學院的副教授和副院長。與他人合著了廣受好評的專著《基蘭·廷伯萊克：探究》，由里佐利出版。）

By Karl Wallick (Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture & Urban Planning.He co-authoredthe critically acclaimed monograph “KieranTimberlake： Inquiry,” published by Rizzoli.)

OS House

不知不覺，我們生活在一個盲目迷戀圖片和造像的世界中，而忽略了生活中的實質(zhì)和細微之處。不足為奇的是，現(xiàn)在的許多建筑都在不斷追求新奇和獨特的風格，這是當代世界文化中普遍存在的審美輕浮和壓抑膚淺的根源，而這些也不過是稍縱即逝。正是在這種文脈下，約翰森-施馬林建筑事務所的建筑設計則顯得與眾不同，激進中融合了簡單和安靜。

這種風格獨一無二，無與倫比。這些建筑設計低調(diào)質(zhì)樸，它們或許只存在于你的眼角余光中或第二次路過時才引起你的注意?？傆幸恍┮庀氩坏降氖挛飼屇阃Ｏ履_步，比如明亮的芥末色門道，優(yōu)雅的不銹鋼薄窗框，略顯不同尋常的磚墻。很明顯，布萊恩·約翰森和塞巴斯蒂安·施馬琳對當前這一趨勢持謹慎態(tài)度，他們陶醉于適度正交構(gòu)圖的簡單，尋求持久清晰的氣氛，而不是新穎的形式。他們關注的不是精細的體積或復雜的幾何學，而是集中在簡單的輪廓以及固體和空隙的空間延伸中。隨著時間的推移，建筑慢慢與所在地融合在一起，污漬消失殆盡就是最好的證明。這是一種近乎修正主義的保留感，使建筑的架構(gòu)與今天的數(shù)字驅(qū)動實踐和他們對算法實驗的關注形成鮮明對比。

沿襲早期赫爾佐格和德梅隆或Tham & Videg?rd 的傳統(tǒng)，并將其推廣應用到北美文脈中，約翰森·施馬林的建筑依據(jù)的是嚴格的材料探索和構(gòu)造實驗；它們在形式上保守低調(diào)，但精心設計的材料和創(chuàng)新的組裝技術(shù)使它們能夠從許多在建的建筑中脫穎而出，這就引出了一個近乎自相矛盾的問題：在今天，端莊有可能被顛覆嗎？

文脈與故事

了解威斯康星州（約翰森·施馬林的家鄉(xiāng)，位于美國中西部）的文化文脈對其作品風格演變所產(chǎn)生的影響至關重要。威斯康星州的光環(huán)籠罩在阿卡迪亞和沒落的工業(yè)，充滿活力的水上公園，舒適的砂鍋菜，以及偶爾過度浪漫化的腹地森林的黑暗之美。約翰森·施馬林的作品和實踐充分體現(xiàn)了該地區(qū)普遍存在的人造景觀和真實景觀，庸俗與原始的草原景觀之美并存。

場所精神顯示了該地區(qū)所特有的一切顯性和無形條件。諸如事件、流動或文化接觸之類的詞匯也體現(xiàn)了類似精神，雖然這是大多數(shù)建筑師關注的一個基本問題，但在當代建筑話語中，“場所精神”一詞并沒有得到廣泛使用，但在約翰森·施馬林的設計過程中，卻凸顯了自己的核心價值。其特點是通過不懈探索隱藏在每一地點的共鳴品質(zhì)，通過簡單調(diào)查來揭開其建筑所在地的場所精神。在這一過程中，他們發(fā)展出一種敘事方式，提供了一種方法來組織五花八門的文脈藝聚空間，并將它們編織成一條精確的建筑故事線?！拔拿}（context）”從contextus（拉丁文“編織在一起”的意思）衍生而來，為建筑師提供了協(xié)調(diào)文化、美學、技術(shù)、居住和歷史等不同力量的DNA。古代的建造者通過占卜當?shù)貏又参锏钠鹪磥泶_定一個地方的適宜性，并依靠基本方向和地理位置來確定基本方位。同樣，我們對文脈做出反應，將其作為確定自己方向和建立世界觀的一種手段。然而，在約翰森·施馬林的作品中，建筑不僅僅是對周圍環(huán)境的反應；相反，它們被視為關聯(lián)框架。文化、歷史、生物和技術(shù)力量貫穿其項目中，但最有力的呈現(xiàn)是基于直覺現(xiàn)象的集合。重點是對細節(jié)的處理，如樹皮、光、陰影和葉子的半透明模式。在一波波長滿草的田野發(fā)現(xiàn)紋理，從土壤中提取色彩。人們會特別注意孤山的遠景。古器物來自于前住民，在這些被遺棄的古器物的古銅色中發(fā)現(xiàn)特征。維度由地平線的寬度決定。因此，他們的設計顯示了對紋理、光度、和陰影的高度認識；同時，他們也在網(wǎng)站上傳達出一種謙卑恭遜，對關系不予評價的態(tài)度。在迷彩屋，我們采取了一些措施，使建筑物在樹線后漸隱，以免干擾景觀邊緣的細微效果。Topo住宅像土丘一樣從大草原上緩緩升起，與遺址的地形輪廓相呼應。510 房屋的蔥郁綠植成為墻板的模板，這些墻板將外面的景觀帶入建筑內(nèi)部。

約翰森·施馬林的建筑力求增強現(xiàn)場感，編織出一個清晰的故事使人們體驗到當時的文脈。它突出了日常生活中的細微差別。精心設計的視圖和邊緣來定義內(nèi)部設計，這些視圖和邊緣融入到景觀中。墻壁、隔板、外殼和窗戶的位置以這樣一種方式定位：向內(nèi)、向外或向上都可以注意到建筑物。一條走廊的方向可能是這樣的，當光線從藍色變成琥珀色時，我們會一次次注意到光線的變化，而在其他時間，光線則幾乎不會有什么變化。相反，在類似于Redaction House 的項目中，視野可能會被有意遮擋，以修訂現(xiàn)存的雜亂文脈，這就好像是在暗示一個理念——它原本可能會是某種樣子而現(xiàn)在并非如此。

無論建筑的具體文脈映射如何，約翰森·施馬林的內(nèi)部空間是有意簡單設計的風格毫無隱藏，幾乎為個體風格，接近于直接使用。人們和他們的日常故事都是以形式或細節(jié)為基礎的。約翰森·施馬林的房子旨在為日常生活中的人提供一個中性住所，強調(diào)色彩、材料對比或空間只是個別情況。

體積與形態(tài)

如今，形式在建筑中的作用常常被簡化為尋找新奇的形象，就好像創(chuàng)意從設計師的頭腦中冒出來，在沒有外部污染的情況下源源不斷地流入頁面。當然，這樣的理解忽略了許多真正影響形式的其他因素的作用，如文脈、方位、程序、裝配、照明、聲學、熱梯度和建筑預算。那么，什么樣的工具才是管理和解釋復雜流程的合適工具，這些流程甚至支撐著簡單的建筑形式？形態(tài)就是這樣一種工具。作為一種綜合解釋手段，形態(tài)過程代表了一種理解圍繞一組特定參數(shù)構(gòu)造物理形態(tài)的基礎方式，它們在約翰森·施馬林的創(chuàng)作過程及其對適度立方圖形的執(zhí)著“依賴”中扮演了關鍵角色。

Pleated House

Linear Cabin

約翰森·施馬林對形態(tài)學研究的嚴謹方法確保了他們項目體積演變的深刻和清晰，這一點使他們與豐富的造型策略相對立。在其項目中，對材料選擇，裝配精確度和場地靈感的那種平靜的信念占據(jù)了主導地位。即使是像堆疊式小屋和線性小屋這樣的小型項目，也要進行大量的體積調(diào)查，并輔以一系列物理模型和圖表，這些模型和圖表記錄了形態(tài)操作的順序，目的是在多尺度的遭遇中增強空間體驗，或提供令人驚訝的視覺效果。這些適中的體積當然不能模仿自然形態(tài)；顯然，它們是人類創(chuàng)造的人工建筑，但它們展現(xiàn)了隱性場所的姿態(tài)。通過采用經(jīng)濟的形式，這些建筑與周圍環(huán)境明顯不同，但表現(xiàn)卻不張揚。

約翰森·施馬林項目的實際體積質(zhì)量總是來自于對一個立方體質(zhì)量的仔細操作，產(chǎn)生了豐富多樣的室內(nèi)空間體驗。固體和空隙的精心安排以及由此產(chǎn)生的空間和體積的互鎖是約翰森·施馬林形態(tài)學研究的核心，并構(gòu)成變化的學科基礎。

然而，盡管這些建筑的體積設計看起來很簡單，但它們卻遠非這樣平淡無奇。從懸挑的體積到起伏的木板和大塊的玻璃，再到精心挑選的單個螺釘頭，在各種建筑尺度上，其對空間、建筑構(gòu)件和景觀安排成復雜組合的關注都是顯而易見的。即使規(guī)模很小，約翰森·施馬林的建筑通過在內(nèi)部質(zhì)量矩陣及其與外部的相互關系中精心安排一個給定的程序，呈現(xiàn)出更宏大的規(guī)模。當進入這些看似直接的箱體時，我們會遇到由重疊的體積構(gòu)成的復雜的程序?qū)?，在許多情況下，這些程序?qū)訒⑽覀円蛞粋€休憩區(qū)域，而這片區(qū)域則為意想不到的景觀所束縛。體驗品質(zhì)是那種環(huán)境中的寧靜和靜止。

輪廓和內(nèi)飾

輪廓和內(nèi)飾是裝潢的策略性工具，在約翰森·施馬林的建筑中起著重要作用。當然，對許多建筑師來說，“裝潢”是一個頗有爭議的術(shù)語，大概是因為它暗示了一種超出必要范圍的裝飾。但裝潢促進了與建筑的密切聯(lián)系。裝潢調(diào)和了建筑風格。裝潢給平淡的工作增添了活力。裝潢是對各種建筑要求和功能的夸大和放大，否則這些要求和功能會被忽略。不要與裝飾（僅僅是一種表面應用，如壁紙）混淆，裝潢是功能和細節(jié)的結(jié)合。這些接縫是建筑的技術(shù)要素，有時是小規(guī)模的，通常只被認為是外圍因素，但卻是我們在建筑環(huán)境中價值工作方式的核心。

通過強調(diào)邊緣細節(jié)而不是整體造型的優(yōu)勢，約翰森·施馬林尋求強調(diào)建筑的核心學科任務，使我們所占據(jù)的空間人性化。事實上，輪廓和內(nèi)飾的部署明確了觸感和構(gòu)造的特性，滲透到他們的建筑工作中；它們是零件的施工方法和重音符號。通過一種附加方法，在折疊式房屋的簡單體積上增添細節(jié)，并將其置于樹木繁茂的林地中。同樣，Topo 住宅上的翅片將建筑的外部襯里與場地的廣闊規(guī)模無縫銜接在一起。在這里，裝潢作為一組控制性的線條出現(xiàn)。分隔縫、接縫、陰影、豎框和其他連接可以調(diào)節(jié)場地條件并強調(diào)人的比例。這種強調(diào)有時可以補充形式和體積的辨認度。在其他情況下，線條會被有意改動，以模糊其確切定位。

諸如熵、侵蝕、染色和腐蝕時間等術(shù)語對建筑的影響。通常，建筑師只是默默地應對建筑物不可避免的衰變，以悄悄掩蓋老化跡象。相反，約翰森·施馬林通過夸大甚至頌揚建筑外殼結(jié)構(gòu)設計中的熵過程來挑戰(zhàn)我們懷舊、衰敗和修復的概念。侵蝕是必然的，時間的腐朽是不可避免的，約翰森·施馬林對真實性的不斷探索解釋了他們對易受風化影響的組件和建筑表皮的興趣，將氧化和侵蝕的自然過程轉(zhuǎn)化為一種活躍的美學設置。約翰森·施馬林并沒有將其設計為電阻元件或納入結(jié)構(gòu)、建筑表皮和機械系統(tǒng)的主要排序策略中，而是有意將綠銹、污漬及其陰影效果提升到符合其自身構(gòu)造順序的建筑飾面上。設計者工作室說明了這一策略：在這里，生鋼覆層每天都會有一個新的襯里，因為天氣原因，產(chǎn)生侵蝕，所以營造了新的裝飾效果。在約翰森·施馬林的建筑上和建筑內(nèi)部的光線和預謀衰變的痕跡相互作用，在其禁欲主義的體量和表面上增加了一個短暫的、不斷變化的層——這是一個裝飾層，強調(diào)了建筑固有的時間性，更廣泛地說，是強調(diào)了生命本身。

修正和修復

理想情況下，建筑是一種修正日常生活的方式。我們用音樂、運動、宗教、藝術(shù)和故事等手段，為日常生活增添目標和樂趣。約翰森·施馬林建筑事務所的建筑設計，放大了建筑的影響力，讓我們注意到簡單細微之處并放大其影響。一幢建筑物彰顯了在天空映襯下的樹枝之美，啟發(fā)我們反思生命的短暫。優(yōu)美陳舊的青銅立面面板不禁讓我們想起了生活的短暫。實際上，可以通過深思熟慮的建筑修改來增強和重塑整個場地，比如圍繞著低矮的Topo 住宅的被侵蝕的冰川地帶，或者遭受了Belay MKE 風化的、陳舊的后工業(yè)時代的景觀。

可以說，對被忽視或低估的建筑物、場地和空間的再利用和再創(chuàng)造，是建筑師可以使用的一些最基本的可持續(xù)發(fā)展策略：在不斷變化的世界中，老舊的建筑在其生命的盡頭會被賦予新型的流通方式，而不是被丟棄在垃圾填埋場。約翰森·施馬林的建筑因其環(huán)保性而受到贊譽，但他們可持續(xù)進行的大部分工作可能是早期的翻新和修復項目。這些項目并不是盲目的仁慈行為，相反，正如肯尼斯·弗蘭普頓說的那樣，一種對商品化永無止境進程的一種抵抗——尋求修復、贊美、放大被低估的品質(zhì)。這里的嚴謹來自于對廢棄建筑的關鍵元素的微妙操縱，約翰森·施馬林的新設計就出現(xiàn)在其中。像Salve 員工餐廳的室內(nèi)窗戶這樣簡單的元素，展現(xiàn)了舊磚石地基墻壁和前住民歷史層次等信息，這產(chǎn)生了意想不到的視覺效果，也將建筑的衰變和腐蝕轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)榱钊梭@嘆的美學元素。對于約翰森·施馬林來說，在一座廢棄建筑中發(fā)現(xiàn)的遺留文物成為了對現(xiàn)有空間進行徹底改造的積木，就像在前布拉茨啤酒廠發(fā)現(xiàn)的4,800 個空啤酒瓶被改造成了具有紀念意義的旋轉(zhuǎn)幕墻，巧妙地捕捉到了這座歷史建筑的場所精神。

約翰森·施馬林的所有作品出自同一個工作室，他們沉迷于材料和細節(jié)。但是，假設構(gòu)造重點包括其實踐的全部內(nèi)容，則會使其作用力的覆蓋面最小化。事實上，在威斯康星州弗蘭克·賴特，馬塞爾·布魯爾的中西部野獸主義和阿爾瓦·阿爾托的現(xiàn)代主義現(xiàn)象學化身中的空間和材料限制的建筑中，指導約翰森·施馬林設計過程的精神氣質(zhì)與在建筑作品中再現(xiàn)的顯著主題，使他們的實踐處于先河之中。約翰森·施馬林的項目中的細節(jié)證明了一種對執(zhí)行的深切關注，這種關注基于一種廣泛的世界觀，并由對建筑如何與歷史、遺址和文化相互作用的認真閱讀驅(qū)動。約翰森·施馬林的建筑之所以如此有影響力，最終如此動人，是因為它提高了我們對存在本質(zhì)的感受力。這種特質(zhì)通常是無形的，激勵我們有意識地體驗、無條件地擁抱我們周圍復雜的條件，雖然這些條件有時會相互矛盾。它提出了微妙之美的新奇形式，我們的生活方式與居住空間的另類模式，以及意識理想與物質(zhì)世界的參與。在一個充斥著建筑師們渴望視覺華麗的時代，前所未有的形式主義古怪狂歡，瘋狂喧囂。約翰森·施馬林自信地斷言，一種新型謙遜美學的倡導者——一種平靜安定、注重周邊環(huán)境的建筑，由于人們對形式嚴謹、細節(jié)精明和概念化理念的執(zhí)著追求，會受到其推動發(fā)展。

We live in a world that inadvertently fetishizes images and iconography at the expense of substance and nuance.Not surprisingly, much of today’s architecture is engaged in a perpetual,trivial quest for novelty and uniqueness—fleeting qualities at the root of aesthetic frivolity and oppressive superficiality that permeate much of contemporary culture across the globe.It is within this context that the workofJohnsen Schmaling Architects offers a stark alternative, an architecture of radical simplicity and quiet repose.

Johnsen Schmaling’s buildings are unique, but peripherally so.They are subtle, and you may notice them out of the corner of your eye or only the second time you pass by. Something unexpected will stop you: a bright mustard doorway, an elegantly thin stainless-steel window frame,a slightly unusual brick coursing.It is evident that Brian Johnsen and Sebastian Schmaling are wary of formal trends.Reveling in the simplicity of modest orthogonal compositions, they seek atmospheres of enduring clarity rather than novel form.Instead of elaborate volumes or complex geometry,they focus on simple profiles and spatial extensions of solids and voids.Stains are worn proudly as evidence of a building slowly engaging with its place over time.It is an almost revisionist sense of reserve that places their architecture in marked contrast to today’s digitally driven practices and their focus on algorithmic experiments.

Following the lineage of early Herzog & deMeuron orTham&Videg?rdand extending it into the North American context, Johnsen Schmaling’s projects are informed by rigorous material explorations and tectonic experimentations; they are formally reserved and muted, but their carefully curated material palettes and innovative assembly techniques allow them to stand out from much of what is being built today—which begs the almost paradoxical question: Is it possible for modesty to now be subversive?

context & narrative

It is critical to understand the impact thatthecultural context of Wisconsin, Johnsen Schmaling’shome base in the American Midwest, has had on the evolution of their body of work.Wisconsin’s auraoscillates betweenArcadia and vanished industries,between exuberant waterparks, the comfort of casseroles, and the occasionally over-romanticized dark beauty of hinterland forests.It is the region’spervading juxtaposition of the artificial and the authentic, of kitsch and the raw beauty of prairie landscapes,that plays out in JohnsenSchmaling’s work and practice.

Genius locidescribes theentirety of overt andintangible conditionsthat are unique to a certain locale. Words such as events, flows, or cultural engagement capture a similar spirit. While it is an elemental concern to most architects, the term genius lociis not widely used as a term in contemporary architectural discourse, but it reveals itself as a central concern in Johnsen Schmaling’s design process. The character of their projects is formed bya tenacious search for the resonant qualities hidden in every site, by concise investigations to uncover the genius loci of the land their architecture occupies.Along the way, they develop a narrative that provides the means to organize myriad contextual encounters and weave them into a precise architectural storyline.

Derived from contextus, the Latin word for‘weaving together’, context provides the DNA for an architect toreconcile divergent forces of culture, aesthetics, technology,inhabitation, and history.Ancient builders divined the origins of local flora and fauna to determine a site’s suitability and relied on cardinal directions and local geography to determine primary orientations.Similarly, we respond to context as a means toorient ourselves andestablish our worldview.In Johnsen Schmaling’s work,however, buildings are not just merely reacting to their surroundings; instead, they are conceived as contextual frames.Cultural, historical, biological, and technical forces are woven throughout their projects, but the strongest presence is based on a collection of intuitive phenomena.Emphasis is given to minutia such as bark,patterns of light, shadows, and translucency of foliage.Textures are found in waves of grassy fields.Colors are extracted from the loamysoil of a site. Special attention is garnered to a distant view of a lonely hill.Character is discovered in the patina of abandoned artifacts from previous inhabitants.Dimensions are determined by the breadth of the horizon.Consequently, their designs display a heightened awareness of textures, luminosity, and shadow; at the same time, they convey a sense of humility and reserve in relationship to the site.At the Camouflage House, care was taken to not disturb the subtle effects present in the margins of the landscape by allowing the building to fade behind a treeline.The Topo House gently rises from the prairie like a mound, echoing the contours of the site’s topography.The lush greenery surrounding the 510 House became atemplate for wall panels that bring the landscape outside into the building inside.

Johnsen Schmaling’s architecture strives to enhance the sense of site and weave a legible story of encounter with that context. It serves to foreground the nuances of everyday life.Interiors are defined by carefully framed views and edges that dissolve into the landscape.The location of walls, partitions, casework, and windows are positioned in such a way that one pauses and focuses attention inward,outward, or upward.A corridor might be oriented so that light catches our attention again and again as it changes from blue to amber on otherwise barely different days.Conversely, in projects like the Redaction House,views may be intentionally occluded to edit the existing cluttered context, as if to suggest an ideal of what might have been instead of what is.

Regardless of a building’s specific contextual responses, Johnsen Schmaling’s interiorspaces are deliberately simply and nearly bare in their immediate proximity to individuals and use.People and their everyday stories are meant to be foregrounded over form or elaborate details.Johnsen Schmaling’s houses are intended to serve as a neutral ground for the characters of everyday life with only an occasional emphasis of color, a material contrast, or avoid.

volume & morphology

Today, the role of form in architecture is oftentimesreduced to a search for novel figures, as if ideas appeared out of nowhere in a designer’s head and flowedonto the page free of external contamination.Of course, such an understanding leaves out the role of so many other factors that truly influence form, such as context,orientation, program, assembly, illumination, acoustics, thermal gradients, and construction budgets.What, then, are suitable tools to manage and explain the complex flows that underpin even simple building forms? Morphology is such a tool.A means of synthesis and explanation, morphological processes represent a way to understand the basis of structuring physical form around a set of particular parameters, and they play a key role in Johnsen Schmaling’s creative process and its inexorable reliance on modest cubic figures.

The rigorous methodology of Johnsen Schmaling’s morphological studies ensures profound clarity in the volumetric evolution of their projects, something that positions themin opposition to strategies of exuberant figuration.In their projects, a quiet confidence in material choice, precision of assembly, and site inspiration dominates.Even small projects like Stacked Cabin and Linear Cabin undergo intense volumetric investigations, supported by an array of physical models and diagrams that document the sequencing of morphological operations intended to enhance the spatial experience at multiple scales of encounteror offer surprising visual effects.These modestly sized volumes certainly don’t mimic natural forms; they are clearly artificial constructs created by man, but they take a recessive site stance.By employing an economy of form, the buildings are assertively different from their environs but decline to shout about it.

The actual volumetric massing of Johnsen Schmaling’s projectsis invariably derived from the careful manipulation of a cubic mass that yields a rich variety of interior spatial experiences.Thediligentarrangement of solids and voids and the resultinginterlock of space and volumeareat the core of Johnsen Schmaling’s morphological studies and constitute a disciplinary basis for variation.

Despite their apparent volumetric simplicity,however, the buildings are far from plain.The care with which spaces, building components, and views are arranged into compositionallycomplex tableaus is evident at manifold architectural scales,from cantilevered volumes to undulating wooden boards and large sheets of glass down to carefully selected individual screw-heads. Even whensmallin size,Johnsen Schmaling’s buildings assume grander dimensions through the careful arrangement of a given program within a matrix of interior masses and their reciprocal relationships with the exterior.When we enter these seemingly straightforward boxes, we encounter complex programmatic layers wrought by overlapping volumes,which in many cases lead us to areas of repose bound by unexpected views into the landscape.Theexperiential quality is one of tranquility and stillness within the environment.

lineaments& linings

Lineaments and linings are strategic instruments of ornamentation and play an important role in Johnsen Schmaling’s architecture.Of course, “ornament” is a deeply contested term for many architects, presumably becauseit implies an embellishment beyond the necessary.But ornament encourages an intimate connection with architecture.Ornament harmonizes the most rigorous and severe forms.Ornament adds life to the banality of just doing the job byminimum means.Ornament is the exaggeration and amplification of various building requirements and functions that would otherwise go unnoticed.Not to be confused with decoration(which is merely a surface application like wallpaper), ornament is the joining of function and detail.These joints, technical elements of construction that are sometimes small-scale and often perceived only peripherally, are central to the way wevalue works in our built environment.

By emphasizing marginal details over the dominance of holistic figuration, Johnsen Schmaling seek to underscore architecture’s core disciplinary taskto humanize the spaces we occupy.In fact, thedeployment of lineaments and linings informs the very character of tactility and tectonics that permeates their built work; they are part construction method and part accent mark.Through an additive approach, detail is appended to the simple volumes of Pleated House, knitting it into its wooded site.Similarly, the oblique fins on Topo House stitch the building’s exterior lining with the vast scale of the site.Here, ornament emerges as a set of controlling lineaments.Reveals, joints, shadows, mullions, and other connections mediate the site conditions and emphasize the human scale.This emphasis can at times compliment the legibility of forms and volumes.In other cases, lineaments are purposely agitated to obscure their precise roles.

Terms such as entropy, erosion, staining, and corrosion frame time’s impact on architecture.Typically, architects addressa building’s inescapable decay only tacitlyin an effortto quietly disguise thesigns of aging.In contrast,Johnsen Schmaling challenge our notions of nostalgia, decay, and repair by exaggerating and even celebrating entropic processes in the design of their building envelopes. Erosion is insistent, time's decay is inevitable, and Johnsen Schmaling’s incessant search for authenticityexplainstheir interest inassemblies and building skinsthat are susceptible to the effects of weathering, turning the natural processof oxidation and erosioninto an activeaesthetic device.Instead of being designed as resistive elements or subsumed within the dominant ordering strategies of structure, skin,and mechanical systems, Johnsen Schmaling intentionally elevate patina, stains,and their shadowy effects to architectural finishes worthy of their own tectonic order.The Studio for a Composer illustrates this strategy: here, raw steel cladding receives a new lining every day as weather constructs new ornamental erosive effects.The interplay of light and the markings of premeditated decay on and within Johnsen Schmaling’s buildings adds an ephemeral, ever-changing layer to thesurface of their ascetic volumes and surfaces – an ornamental layer that underscores the inherenttemporality of architecture and, more broadly, life itself.

amendment & remediation

Ideally, architecture is a way of amending the goings-on of everyday life.We use music, sport, religion, art, and stories as means to add purpose and joy to the regular habits of existence.Johnsen Schmaling Architects’ work exemplifies architecture’s capacity to make us notice and amplifysimple encounters.A building highlights the beauty of a tree branch silhouetted against the sky, inspiring us to reflect on states of ephemerality.Asight of gracefully aged bronzefa?ade panelsreminds us of life’s transience.In fact, entire sites can be enhanced and reinvented through thoughtful architectural amendment, like the eroded glacier fieldssurrounding the low-slung Topo House, or the timeworn, post-industriallandscape that hosts the weathered volume ofBelay MKE.

The reuse and reinvention of overlooked or undervalued buildings, sites, and spaces are arguably some of the most fundamental sustainable strategies at an architect’s disposal: instead of being discarded in a landfill, old structures at the end of their life are given new currencyin an ever-changing world.Johnsen Schmaling’s buildings have been lauded for theirenvironmentally performance,but some of their most sustainable work might be the renovation and remediation projectsfrom the early years of their practice. Those projects are no acts of blind mercy but instead, as Kenneth Frampton might say, a form of resistance against the perpetual march of commodification – they seek to repair, to compliment, to amplify undervalued qualities.Rigor hereemerges from the subtle manipulation of key elements of abandoned structures within which Johnsen Schmaling’s new designs emerge.Simple elements, like the deep interior windows at the Salve StaffCanteen that reveal old masonry foundation walls and historic layers of previous occupants, produce unexpected visual effects and transform decay and corrosion into elements of stunning beauty.For Johnsen Schmaling, left-over artifacts found in an abandoned building become building blocks for the radical transformation of existing spaces, like the 4,800 empty beer bottles found in the former Blatz brewery that were transformed into monumental pivoting screen walls, cleverly capturing the genius loci of this historic building.

JohnsenSchmaling’s oeuvre is that of an office that obsesses overmaterials and details, but the assumption that tectonic emphasis comprises the entirety of their practice minimizes the breadth of forces at work. In fact, the very ethos that guides Johnsen Schmaling’s design process and the broad themes that reappear in the built work situates their practice within antecedents of spatial and material restraint in the architecture of Wisconsin’s own Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer’s Midwest Brutalism, and Alvar Aalto’sembodiment of modernist phenomenology.The details in Johnsen Schmaling’s projects evidence a deep concern for execution that is based on a broad worldview and driven bythe careful reading of how architecture interacts with histories, sites, and cultures. JohnsenSchmaling’sarchitecture is so impactful and, ultimately,so movingbecause itheightens our sensibility toward the essential but often intangible qualities of our existence, inspiring us to experience consciously–andembrace unconditionally– the complex and sometimesparadoxical conditions surrounding us. It suggests novelforms of subtle beauty, alternative models for how we live and inhabit space,and ideals of awareness and engagement with the physical world.In a time filled with the mad-scramble noise of architects longing forvisual flamboyanceandparticipating inan unprecedented bacchanal of formalistic eccentricity,Johnsen Schmalingconfidently assert a rear-guard role as advocates for a new kind of aesthetic humility – a quiet, peripherally operating architecture fueled byan uncompromising quest forformal rigor, astute details, and conceptualdiscipline.

Topo House