Theory of Hrchitecture History.

PAUL LEWIS, MARC TSURUMAKI, DAVID J. LEWIS Princeton Architectural Press, New York ; sections.

mt section ~sign for the :ing. The hes stack lion of the within ~s so seam- • requires ,ight rotating ough an rms on :,use and e spiral ,y the land­ between :raHaus, >gether, and n. Arguably irged sec- I simple ·faces and e project's 1ized ~s to section.

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)aches ;ource of study and investigation. While the works used to exemplify one type of section were selected ~ecause of their ability to clarify and distill a given approach, they do not always illustrate the spatial play of the hybrid combinations. The interplay of two or mare approaches to section gives architects the capacity to not only accommodate complex programs but develop projects that are multilayered. This does not mean, though, that all projects that use more than one type of section are necessarily interesting or compelling works of architecture. Rather, the exploration of the variety and complexity of hybrid approaches demonstrates the expansive range of possibilities of the heuristic structure of section types. The classification system is used not to constrain but to catalyze architectural discourse.

Given its extensive use in architectural practice today, the section arrives surprisingly late in the history of architectural drawing. ln fact, while individual instances of sectional drawing were in evidence by the early part of the fifteenth century, section as a codified drawing type did not complete the triumvirate of plan, section, and elevation in European architectural academies and competitions until the !ate seventeenth or early eighteenth cen­ tury.12 While it is beyond the scope of this essay to map a compre­ hensive history of the architectural section over the course of the last several hundred years in the West, it's instructive to frame the major changes in the conceptualization and deployment of section in order to contextualize its current status and potential.

What follows is a series of episodes that coalesce around several key ideas. Discontinuous and incomplete, these moments reveal the potentials and paradoxes of the section. Primary among these contradictions is the dual nature of the term section itself.

When we speak about section we mean both a representational technique and a series of architectural practices pertaining to the vertical organization of buildings and related architectural and urbanistic constructions. These conditions are interrelated both historically and professionally. Although the two meanings of the term are often used interchangeably and fluidly, we will attempt to clarify this relationship in order to examine the historical trajec­ tory of the section, from its origins as a representational mode to its development as a set of design practices with spatial, tectonic, and performative implications. THE ANALYTICAL CUT: ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANATOMY The origin of section as a representational mechanism, while obscure, has typically been associated with its capacity to reveal .the hidden workings of an existing building or body~often as a retrospective or analytical technique. The earliest surviving .,p.,• Charles Correa, Kanchanjunga Apartments, 1983 Steven Holl Architects, American Library Berlin, 1989 Mecanoo Architecten, Technical University Delft library, 1997 Neutelings Riedijk Architects, Museum aan de Stroom, 2010 15 Villard de Honnecourt, Reims Cathedral, ca. 1230 Donato Bramante, Roman ruins, ca. 1500 Giuliano da Sangallo, Temples of Portumnus and Vesta, 1465 Leonardo da Vinci, study for central plan church, ca. 1507 26 drawings that tentatively depict conditions of an architectural section are Villard de Honnecourt's parchment studies of medieval cathedrals from the thirteenth century. 13 Among the sixty-three pages of ~is known drawings, which range broadly in subject mat­ ter, are hints of a cut through the exterior wall of Reims Cathedral, shown to the side of a drawing primarily intended to illustrate the sequence of flying buttresses shown in elevation. Indeed, while Honnecourt's drawing is orthogonal and made through clean lines, the section as a cut is tentative and incomplete, acting as a side note to the depiction of structural complexities that merge with the qualities of the architecture in the Gothic cathedral. Nevertheless, this early example presages one of the predominant uses of the sectional drawing-as a means to analyze and represent structural and constructional relationships visible only through the delinea­ tion of a building's vertical organization.

While Honnecourt's drawing suggests that section was not wholly unknown in architectural circles prior to the Renaissance, its rise as a codified form of representation has been linked to two related precursors that originate from outside architecture proper: the observation of archaeological ruins and the biological description of the human body. 14 In both instances, section is explicitly associated with the visual and physical dissection of an extant body, whether constructed or organic. As such, section originates as the drawn record of an observed material condition first and as a representational mechanism on!y in retrospect.

Jacques Guillerme and HEllElne VElrln's article "The Archaeology of Section" traces the origin of the architectural drawing to the observation and subsequent depiction of Roman ruins and to the physical breaks and discontinuities in decaying structures. 15 These fragmented monuments provided a view that simultaneously exposed interior and exterior to the eye of the touring architect or artist. According to Guillerme and verin, the practice of record­ ing through drawing these surviving monuments in their state of romantic decay gave slow birth to the section as a conscious projection of architectural intentionality, "transforming the obser­ vation of archaeological remains into the observance of archi­ tectural diagrams." The section understood as an imaginary cut through an otherwise solid building or as a means of describing a future construction comes only after the documentation of ruins that reveal what would otherwise be hidden. This translation necessitated a conceptual shift from a literal depiction of a fragmented building to an abstract device, the imaginary plane of the sectional cut. The conventional nature of this transformation is recorded in the variety of techniques used to make explicit the operations of the cut, ranging from the device of rendering new or projected buildings in quasiruined form to the emergence of poche as a method for depicting the conceptually solid structural fabric of a building.

A parallel set of antecedents can be found in artistic and scientific practices depicting the body and its internal organs that evolved from the physical dissection of human remains and from investigative anatomy as it emerged in the fifteenth century.

As with the architectural section, these drawings often relied ~ctural of medieval :ty-three 1bject mat­ ; Cathedral, Jstrate the ?d, while clean lines, as a side ,rge with the Nertheless, :'!s of the 1t structural , delinea- ,as not aissance, 1ked to tecture biological :tion is tion of an ;ection :::ondition ;pect.

trchaeology g to the rnd to ctures. 15 ultaneously ·chitect of record­ . state nscious :he obser­ archi- nary cut scribing rn of :ranslation ,fa y plane 1sformation plicit the ng new mce of :;tructural and rgans that ind 1 century.

elied upon ari inventive array of visual devices to render explicit the sectional nature of the cuts. The most often cited are Leonardo da Vinci's obsessive studies of the human form, including his drawing of a human skull, which combines aspects of plan, eleva­ tion, and section in a cutaway perspective. Leonardo's depiction of a cranium was not unlike that of the dome in his contem­ poraneous study for a circular library, both demonstrating the act of cutting as essential to simultaneously show exterior and interior conditions of the body or building. In perhaps the most famous of these early medical examples, Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), the vari­ ously skinned and flayed bodies are depicted in poses that mimic those of living and allegorical subjects. These woodcut illustra­ tions are intricately constructed, not only to display the internal structure of muscles and viscera but also to acknowledge the act of cutting as both a physical operation and a representational conceit. Figures adopt stances that help to demonstrate the anatomical systems on view-but also fancifully seem to partici­ pate in their own dissection and display. While it may be difficult to verify any causal relation between these biological depictions and architectural practice, it is nonetheless possible to identify productive similarities whereby techniques applied in one sphere reappeared in the other, suggesting a cross-fertilization of graphic techniques and modes of representation. More important, however, drawing techniques derived from both archaeological and anatomical practices strongly indicate that section originated as a retrospec­ tive rather than prospective tool, an analytical device rather than a generative instrument. It is perhaps this origin in the recording and revealing of extant conditions that has accounted for the slow integration of section as a productive instrumen­ tality in architectural practice . THE EMERGENCE OF THE ARCHITECTURAL SECTION:

MEASURE AND PERCEPTION Sectional drawing as an explicitly architectural technique appears in the work of Italian architects in the latter half of the fifteenth century. At this time a renewed interest in documenting the sectional ruins of classical antiquity intersected with the use of section for speculating on the structural and material properties of ancient buildings that had not deteriorated, as well as for describing new constructions and projects. The Pantheon, built by Emperor Hadrian in AD 128, was a frequent subject of inspired conjecture, with speculative section drawings executed in the hope of ascertaining the structural and proportional logic that had kept it intact.1' It offered to architects a powerful subject for the use of section, given the seductive cut in the illuminating central oculus of the dome. Instead of a sealed dome, the Pantheon displayed a provocative void, allowing interior and exterior space to merge in a manner that would typically be seen only through a section drawing. Early collections of Renaissance drawings (such as the Codex Coner, the Codex Barberini, and the sketches of Baldassarre Leonardo da Vinci, Sku1!, 1489 Andreas Vesalius, drawings, from De Humani Coiporis Fabrica, 1543 Bernardo della Volpaia, Pantheon, from Codex Coner, ca. 1515 27 Bernardo de!la Volpaia, Tempietto, from Codex Coner, ca. 1515 Giuliano da Sangallo, centralized building, from Codex Barberini, ca. 1500 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, St. Peter's, ca. 1520 28 Peruzzi) contain numerous sections, including different interpre­ tations of the Pantheon as well as views of contemporaneous centralized churches. These drawings seek, through an imaginary cut, to trace the exterior and interior profile of the wall, thus visualizing the relationship between the building's form and the space it contained. Even in these early drawings the status of the section as a form of architectural representation was in question, as the mapping of the substance of the wall was only a part of the image. As Wolfgang Lotz noted in his essay "The Rendering of the Interior in Architectural Drawings of the Renaissance," section drawings developed not as a singular and fully codified practice but as a series of incipient operations that overlap and combine in promiscuous ways.17 For Lotz, the question was less the status of the section cut itself than the role this drawing type was to play in either staging interior scenes or recording archi­ tectural measure and proportion. In the Codex Coner (a drawing set now attributed to Bernardo della Volpaia and dated to the early 1500s) the view within the sectioned walls is depicted through a single-point perspective. This painterly approach sacrifices dimensional accuracy for the illusion of a scene visible beyond the cut plane of the section. In crintrast, certain sections in the Codex Barberini (attributed to Giuliano da Sangallo) and in the Pantheon drawing by Peruzzi demonstrate a commitment to ortho­ graphic projection, where the space beyond the cut is shown in elevation with no vanishing point or perspectival distortion. While explicitly spatial, the sectional perspectives of the Codex Coner represent a highly particular notion of space, both adapted to and in part determined by the logic of the drawing type itself. The architectural historian and critic Robin Evans has argued that the inherent logic of the section drawing is heavily biased toward bilaterally symmetrical and axial spatial organi­ zations, which are readily depicted through this technique. 18 Moreover, the centralized and frontal sections of the Codex Coner imply an understanding of space that is conceived volumetrically but also from the perspective of a static observer taking in the architecture as a pictorial composition. In this reading the per­ spectiva! section reinforces a notion of architecture as a principally optical phenomenon, and one tethered to a fixed viewpoint. By contrast, in later drawings of the Codex Barberini arid the work of Peruzzi and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, the observer is progressively removed as a subject through the use of more orthogonal representational conventions in the depiction of sec­ tion. These drawings abandon the optical distortions of perspec­ tive, resulting in a technique that can eliminate the subjective in favor of objective accuracy. This can be understood as a necessary development of the section drawing as a professional document, capable of conveying in unambiguous terms the dimensional and geometric information required by the builder. It is significant that this transition coincided with Sangallo's and Peruzzi's partic­ ipation in the fabricca of St. Peter's under Raphael and the emer­ gence of new hierarchies of building production that separated the architect from building. In Lotz's view this shift also leads to the possibility of more complex, dynamically conceived spaces, r I I I I I I I I I : interpre­ neous imaginary thus and the ,tus of the question, part of endering mce," :odified rlap and was less 1wing type ~ archi­ drawing to the early through ifices beyond 1s in the I in the nt to ortho­ hown in Ion.

the :e, both ·awing ::vans has heavily 1rgani­ ue.18 dex Coner netrically : in the 1e per­ principally 1int. arid the e observer 'more 1 of sec­ perspec­ ective in necessary cument, anal and ficant i's partic­ the emer­ ·arated leads to ;paces, no longer restricted by the single static observation point of the Codex Coner. Lotz makes a claim of evolutionary teleology from the earlier perspectival practices to the emergence of the strictly orthographic section. The perspectival section is principally an illustrative practice, one that maximizes the visual appeal of a singular image to convey both profile and space and combines the quantifiable with the perceptual. The orthographic section, on the other hand, is an instrument of metric description connected to the emer­ gence of codified forms of construction documentation. However, its increase in accuracy requires a multiplication of drawings to provide the requisite information to comprehend complex spaces and architectural assemblies, as the absence of illusionistic depth flattens the legibility of spatial relationships. This progressive bifurcation of orthographic section drawing from perspectival practices coincides with architecture's increas­ ing divergence as a discipline from the other fine arts during the sixteenth century, as exemplified in the work of Sebastiano Serlio.

The increasing use of the dimensionally accurate orthographic section, complete with notations of construction logic, parallels the emergence of the professional architect as distinct from the master craftsman. Whereas elevations describe the image and composition of architecture, a section is an instrument of instruc­ tion, conveying to the builder the means and profile of erection.

Of the-three primary orthographic drawing types~plan, e!evation.1 and section-it is section that aligns most closely to structural and material designations. The typical orthographic section is in many ways the most sophisticated, combining in one image two types of representation: the objective profile marking the cut and the interior elevation beyond, describing the inhabitable space made possible by the inscribed wall!' The section's place in the standard repertoire of orthographic representations is in clear evidence by the time Andrea Palladio's Four Books of Architecture was published in 1570. 20 Here building sections are paired with exterior elevations, each drawing type describing only half of the building and aligned through the use of only orthographic information. Interior perspectives that might better convey the experience of the work are suppressed in favor of measurable facts, reinforcing the conception of the architect as the organizer of geometry. The symmetry of Palladio's work enables this efficiency, which reduces the number of engravings necessary to illustrate a building completely. With this pairing the exterior elevation sits in juxtaposition to the interior elevation, the section serving to reveal the interplay between the shell of the building and its interior disposition. In Palladio's work the dis­ tinction and similarity between the section and the elevation are deployed to full effect. While sharing the profile of the building, the elevation illustrates the composition and order of architecture, legacies of architecture as an aesthetic art. Section reveals the material and mass necessary to construct the edifice, knowledge unique to architecture as a profession aligned with the craft of building. Palladio's section-elevation hybrids exemplify the dual nature of architecture as an art and a craft and illustrate the Baldassarre Peruzzi, Pantheon, 1531-35 1 1 ru o'o ra:rnJlinJJtm1r1;~~ l; ITTili [~~-~ 0 roJlJ ~ d.-01 !J !Jlfi,J .~ CJ O UM I :;J 121 mv;i CJ/ ----·---------- I ---,....,.,_, Sebastiano Serlio, Project N13, from Book Vil of On Domestic Architecture, ca. 1545 - --"""" -,.:1~.-.,;o • 'I Pu • • Andrea Palladio, La Rotonda, ca. 1570 29 .. /") ·0 @ J.I. r " . Pl~> P> •• ' . . "·,,a.............~, Andrea Palladio, baptisterium of Constantine, 1570 Etienne-Louis Boul!ee, cenotaph for Isaac Newton, 1784 Etienne-Louis Bou!lee, conical ceijotaph, ca. 1780 30 synthesis of the exterior and interior as quintessentially the domain of the architect.

It is important to note that the load-bearing obligation of the wall meant that for Palladio and his contemporaries, the shapes of the wall, floor, and ceiling were coincident with the structural system. Yet if we compare the plan and the section, the very same wall is rendered in completely opposite ways. In plan, walls are solid, filled in to reinforce the legibility of the organization of rooms and spaces, which are left blank. The walls in section are white, left as voids between the highly articulated interior surfaces beyond. The plan is the privileged architectural figure, with alignment between wall and spatial concept heavily marked.

On a page, the plan dominates, setting the primary terms by which the building as an architectural composition is to be read and understood. In contrast, the material condition of the wall in section is left as a void, a gap between rooms. While the plan may organize, the section affords greater play among the shape, form, and organization of the material being cut and the inhab­ itable architectural space framed by it. Ceilings curve to disperse gravitational load over the large volumes; invisible roof trusses are given the same weight as the floor of the piano nobile; and the scale and size of each building are most clearly evident in section.

It is the particular instrumentality of the section that allows for the simultaneous registration of both form and effect, providing a unique means for exploring, testing, and understanding complex interactions and exchanges of material and space. ETIENNE-LOUIS BOULLEE: FORM AND EFFECT Nearly two hundred years after Palladio, the section drawing continued to increase in importance as a comprehensive means for conveying architectural effects, even though structural obli­ gations remained consistent. It is perhaps in the unbuilt scheme of ttienne-Louis Boullee for the cenotaph for Isaac Newton of 1784 where section is deployed in full, illustrating its potential to choreograph the relationship among architecture, human inhabitants, and site. While Boullee's project was depicted in plan, elevation, and section, it is sectional drawings that convey the full force of the project. Two sections, one depicting daytime and the other night, capture fully the experiential inversion intended by the design. During the day, the interior of the massive sphere would be illuminated by cuts through the exterior walls, creating the impression of a captured night sky. At night, the inverse would occur, with a massive illuminated orb transforming the interior space into a day!it room. Only through section drawings is the temporal juxtaposition between the constructed world within the architectural sphere and the natural world outside made visible. While the materiality of the building is never revealed, the tonal marking of the foundation, walls, and shell shifts to align with the pictorial goal of each section. A light section tone in the daytime image reveals conical' cuts that penetrate the massive structure to create the illusion of night, whereas in the nighttime image, the section blends into the evening sky, retreating from consideration in deference to -~ the on of the e shapes tructural ~ very ,Jan, walls ization section 1terior 11 figure, y marked.

ns by be read he wall the plan 1e shape, :i inhab- ) disperse :russes le; and the in section.

ows for iroviding a complex wing 3 means ·al obli- : scheme 1ton of ::itentla!

nan :ed in t convey . daytime ion ie massive r walls, t, the storming 1osition ;phere and ality of oundation, !ach s conical/ llusion mds into ice to the poWer of the manufactured light source. Despite the absence of any perspectival projection, BouHee's section clearly demon­ strates the capacity to convey experience over tectonic designa­ tion, aligning with his conviction that architecture should not be bound by obligations of building but premised on the embodiment of ideas. Paradoxically, section, the very drawing type now most associated with the materials of construction, was deployed by Boullee for the opposite purpose, illustrating succinctly its multi­ valent potential. EUGENE EMMANUEL VIOLLET-LE-DUC:

STRUCTURE AND EXPRESSION In large part constructions through the seventeenth century consisted of space circumscribed by masonry mass, resulting in sectional depictions in which exterior profile and interior space were closely interrelated through the thickness of the poche. How­ ever, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the solid wall of load-bearing masonry architecture was challenged by an increasingly layered set of conditions, reflecting new structural technologies associated with the emerging materials of cast and wrought iron. In this context the section gained enhanced currency as an effective means for describing and analyzing architectural form, understood as a direct expression of static forces. Of partic­ ular significance in this regard are the writings and drawings of the French architect and theorist Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, who relied on the section to demonstrate the interdependency of formal and structural systems that were not only central to his ideas but key tenets in the development of modern architecture. Viollet-le-Duc set his work In direct juxtaposition to the teachings of the tcole des Beaux-Arts, which had focused on composition and plan. In his Lectures on Architecture, Viollet­ le-Duc outlined his goal to rethink Gothic architecture in order to adapt what he saw as its exemplary structural rationality to the new materials and constructional potentials of his time.

21 The Lectures are an expression of principles derived from the prac­ tices of previous eras, illustrated with sectional engravings. Rather than describing buildings per se, Viollet-le-Duc presented these engravings as a series of case studies that translate the masonry-based architecture of the past into the new expression proper to the nineteenth century. Viollet-le-Duc's comparative rendering in "Lecture XII" of medieval and modern methods for supporting a projecting gallery, for example, depicts the replace­ ment of heavy stone corbeling by an iron strut. The efficacy of this methodology is described in the language of efficiency and economy: he writes, 11We shall effect a saving in expense and shall obtain a building that will present greater security, will be less weighty, and will allow a better circulation of air about the ground floor." 22 His ideas are supported by the didactic nature of the section and its capacity to convey economically the dynamics of structural and other gravitational forces, from drainage to ventilation, in their relation to built form.

A related drawing by Viollet-le-Duc, from the same lecture, depicting a "novel method of resisting the thrust of vaulting," Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, vaulted room, 1872 Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, medieval and modern methods for supporting a projecting gallery, 1872 - - c.,.-.c,,;seor -. -.-;;,;;-. J Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, structural system, 1872 31 Phillipe Bauche, Coupe de la Ville de Paris, 1742 Eugenio dos Santos, street section, 1758 Pierre Patte, street section, 1769 Eug~ne Henard, illustration of the "Street of the Future," 1911 32 offers another example of section as a didactic and projective too!. Addressing the problem of the flying buttress, Viollet-le-Duc replaces the masonry mass of the Gothic buttress with a system of oblique iron struts, bars, and plates intended to resist the out­ ward thrust of the masonry arches above. Importantly, the drawing includes not only the physical form of the new hybrid construc­ tion but also the geometry of its structural relationships, thus transcribing both the material and immaterial into a single repre­ sentation to demonstrate the isomorphism between structural logic and architectural expression. Significantly, in none of these instances does Viollet-!e-Duc provide a plan, as the principles involved relate primarily to the vertical dimension, where gravita­ tional forces and static relationships hold sway. These drawings also capitalize on the capacity of the section to reveal the constructional condition of the building as an assembly of constituent parts. Only through section could Viollet­ le-Duc visualize the new architectural conditions he espoused:

"We no longer have, as in Roman architecture, concrete and homogeneous masses, but rather a kind of organism whose every part has not only its purpose, but also an immediate action." 23 This shift from an architecture based on mass to one of discret~ly adapted parts prefigures the impact of industrialized production and the technologically driven constructional efficiencies that were to come to fruition in the twentieth century. It is also a con­ ception of architecture that is effectively revealed through the device of the section. Since structural assemblies operate first and foremost in the vertical dimension, from foundation to column to arch to roof, the section displays these transferences of force and the corresponding building components in the most direct form. For Viollet-le-Duc 1 the section drawing becomes a transpar­ ent demonstration of the inevitability of architectural forms derived from the tectonic systems of new materials. The adoption of industrialized construction techniques and materials changed fundamentally the nature of architectural practice, with the use of steel and iron columnar and long-span systems uncoupling the enclosure wall from structural obligations.

Paradoxically, the same technological advances that made pos­ sible this interdependence of structure and form announced by Viollet-le-Duc set in motion the terms of their eventual disengage­ ment within the modernist movement. The very efficiency of steel (and subsequently concrete) construction systems, which allowed them to work independently from exterior form and interior space, placed the section, understood as both a represen- . tational technique and a location of architectural practice, in a simultaneous point of liberation and crisis. The section, freed from alignment with structural forces, could take on a new role in regard to the manipulation of space. Simultaneously, the section's responsibility was challenged by the proliferation of repetitive columnar systems and concrete slabs, removing for al! but long-span projects the obligation to sculpt gravitational forces through section as a driver of design. Freedom of form came through the loss of the structural or tectonic imperative that had previously informed the logic of section. Jrojective liollet-le-Duc th a system ,sist the out­ Y, the drawing f construc­ ips, thus single repre­ >tructural one of these xinciples 1ere gravita- the section as an could Viollet­ :!spoused:

·ete and whose every action." 23 , of discretely production cies that s also a con­ ·ough the ,erate first :ion to column ~es of force iost direct ,s a transpar­ forms iques and :ectural I long-span al obligations.

made pos­ ounced by a! disengage­ iency of 11s, which m and h a represen­ ctice, in tion, freed a new role ;ly, the ·ation of :wing for all 1tional forces 11 came ive that had THE SECTIONAL CITY With the growth of the metropolis that accompanied rapid indus­ trialization, section evolved as a critical tool for understanding an increasingly complex layering of architectural, transportational, and hydrological systems. With urban density came the need for a network of interconnected systems to deliver the various services of the modernizing city. While master plans provided the means for organizing territory 1 allowing, for instance, the mapping of Manhattan's grid or the reworking of Paris's streets, boulevards, and parks, it was through the use of the urban cross-section that the increasingly important, yet invisible, operations of the city could not only be made visible but projected as an expansion of political control. Executed not as a recording of existing condi­ tions but as a speculative image of the future, the street section demonstrates the power of this mode of representation to orches­ trate divergent systems, opening new conceptual and spatial territory for development.

The drawings of the Portuguese engineer Eugenio dos Santos and those of the French engineer Pierre Patte are considered the earliest uses of section to organize and understand the metro­ polis conceived as a set of interconnected infrastructural sys­ tems. 24 Of the two, Patte's work is better known, given its influen­ tial role in transforming Paris. Executed in the 1760s, his urban plans and drawings proposed changes to the city and used section to demonstrate the integration of the inner workings of buildings, engaging the depth of the street as a site of future civic improvements. 25 Here the section reveals and organizes systems, unifying the interior of dwellings with the vast network of a shared waste system, Patte's drawings link the civic machinery of the waterworks with the interiors of the adjacent apartment buildings, suggesting the intimate connections between individual domestic lives and the sanitary infrastructure that ties them to larger urban networks. It is only through the use of the section that these two divergent aspects of the city can be understood and visual­ ized as one system, obscuring boundaries of ownership and civic authority through the logic of the drawing. Patte gave greatest focus to the integration of building and street drainage into a shared collection tube, paying careful attention to the depth and materiality of the sewer to ensure the proper durability, slope, and water flow. By contrast, the architecture above the basement level is left blank, undifferentiated, and underdeveloped, a place­ holder designating only future inhabitation. The street monument in the distance is given more attention than the buildings in section. As such, the design concept of Patte illustrates the two distinct trajectories of the urban section, one representing the increased complexity and layering of the city and the other the density made possible by an architecture of repetitive stacking. Presented in 1910, Eugene Henard's "The Cities of the Future" draws directly on the precedent set by Patte. 26 Henard continued to use section to stitch together visible and unseen operations.

Apprehending the challenges cities faced with the promise and potential of new transportation systems, he envisioned the city as a multilayered matrix of tunnels, tracks, and elevated railroads Grand Central Terminal, New York, published in the Scientific American, 1912 Harvey Wiley Corbett, "City of the Future," 1913 ~ I Peter Cook/ Archigram, Plug-in City, Max Pressure Area, 1964 Chicago Central Area Transit Planning Study, 1968 33 William Le Baron Jenney, Fair Store, 1891 ill . f.,'.1.1.;--t, i,, j~ A. B. Walker, cartoon in Life magazine, March 1909 Pier Luigi Nervl, UNESCO Headquarters, 1958 34 that used section to thicken the very ground of the urban condition. Here coal carts render visible the connections among individual buildings and new infrastructural systems to provide power and energy. Amid exuberant embe\Hshments such as vertical shafts to lift personal flying devices and automobiles, Henard draws a series of stacked domestic spaces, ordinary and repetitive, capped in height only to allow sunlight to reach adjacent buildings. Section drawings were instrumental in the thinking of mod­ ernist planners and architects like Henard, as they transformed the ground into a foundation for a densely layered metropolis, accommodating emerging and often competing technologies of transportation and communication through distinct strata. The use of section was essential to the conceptualization of the city to come. From Corbett's City of the Future (1913) to plans for Grand Central Terminal in New York (1912) to Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse (1924), visions of the future were coincident with the image of the city as a multilevel stage, thus leveraging section's capacity to hold in opposition contrasting or even contradictory programmatic conditions in a single view or space. HEGEMONY OF THE STACK While the infrastructures of the city have grown in complexity, from the eighteenth-century emphasis on hygiene and health to the twentieth-century commitment to transportation, power, and communication distribution, the section has continued to per- form a significant role in the conceptualization of urban life. With the rise of populations living in closer proximity and in tighter quarters, section has become increasingly a means to organize and control the politics of the city, mapping the complex layers that are necessary to build and maintain urban systems. As unclaimed ground is increasingly at a premium, the section of cities becomes · multilayered and contested, providing a ripe site for design pro­ jection and invention. From underground transportation and sewers to military and civilian shelters for survival, the infrastructure of industrialized cities of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was configured through sectional projection.

The population density that defines the modern metropolis is made possible only through the most banal forms of the archi­ tectural section, yet gives rise to the use of section as a means to legislate urban politics and map systemic control below- and above ground. Contemporary urban planning through zoning (including setback obligations and limits and controls on height) curbs the unchecked expansion of the city through sectional repeti­ tion. Whether through floor-to-area regulation~, height restrictions, or sky-plane exposure analysis, contemporary zoning operates significantly through the control of section. Zoning controls often ~ave introduced new imperatives for sectional invention in archi­ tecture. The 1916 New York zoning code gave direct rise to the ziggurat-shaped buildings of the 1930s, where a maximum vertical height was coupled with an upper-building envelope dictated by a plane drawn at an angle from the ground to ensure that light would penetrate to the street. Such edicts resulted in buildings whose sections were sheared and staggered, stepping back from I I ·ban condition.

: individual power and ical shafts to jraws a series capped in gs.

g of mod­ msformed itropolis, ologies : strata. The of the city plans for busier's Ville t with the g section's 1tradictory nplexity, I health to power, and j to per- ,n life. With 1 tighter 1 organize and ayers that ,s unclaimed ties becomes esign pro- m and sewers :ructure of :th centuries etropolis f the archi­ a means elow- and zoning on height} :tional repeti­ restrictions, iperates 1trols often m in archi­ ise to the mum vertical ictated ·e that light buildings back from the sidewalk to maximize enclosed space. Contemporary rules specifying that only certain types of spaces must be restricted according to floor-to-area ratios have led to inventive uses of section that skillfully deploy mezzanines, voids, and double­ height spaces to maximize returns on architecture commodified as investment. New urban building types increasingly have used sections as explanatory documents to catalog the multiplicity of systems, circulation paths, and programs that characterize department stores, multistage theaters, hotels, and train stations. The sophis­ tication of building technology able to facilitate divergent uses in a constrained urban block was matched by the increasing use of section to pack often unrelated parts into a single shell or volume. These large-scale projects, often public in nature, iricor­ porate the complex technical systems of the city within the space of a single structure and stand in direct contrast to the standard­ ization of the section characteristic of private development.

Yet at the core, all vertical buildings share a dependence on the elevator and other robust mechanical systems, without which multivalent and layered buildings would not be feasible. The efficiencies of modern construction that have enabled urban densification have played a central role in the develop­ ment of section. From the Chicago frame to the Dom-ino system, contemporary vertical building processes align perfectly with capitalism's driving obligation of creating maximum marketable area on a given plot of land for the least amount of cost. These systems of efficiency, now normative and nearly unquestioned, are in tension with the more intricate spatial types required to meet a variety of uses and building performances and negate the rich potential of more inventive sectional approaches. Not every human activity or building system is ideally served by the undifferentiated space provided by repetitive floor plates.

It is precisely section drawing's aptness as a tool for imagining alternative ways of creating space that makes it a critical means of confronting dominant systems of construction and spatial organizations determined by systems of economic efficiencies.

Given the environmental and human costs of the relentless pursuit of capital in so much of today's built environment, there is clearly a broad social and political potential in the explora­ tion of more complex sectional practices. THE CONTEMPORARY SECTION The advances in material and structural systems of industrializa­ tion, combined with the economic im!)eratives of capitalism, have polarized the architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to the section. At one end, efficiencies of economy push toward repetition and sameness. Simultaneously, the plasticity of construction materials an? systems under the obligation to meet increasingly complex building requirements encourages a wider range of sectional exploration than what was possible with premodern load-bearing wall systems. The interplay between standardization and complexity frames to a great degree the current approach to the conceptualization Foreign Office Architects, Yokohama Terminal, 2002 Oilier Scofidio + Renfro, Eyebeam Museum of Art and Technology, 2004 35 H6weler + Yoon Architecture, Building 2345, 2008 Sou Fujimoto, Tokyo Apartment, 2009 WORKac, Nature-City, 1011 36 of section in architectural discourse, informed in parallel by the fundamental shift over the last thirty years to the use of digital technology. The ability of computer-aided drawing programs to copy and paste with speed plays directly into economies of same­ ness. At the same time, digital modeling software programs have unleashed spatial, formal, and material complexities that were heretofore difficult, if not impossible, to visualize and realize, creating the possibility for unprecedented sectional complexity.

The ability to cut or take a section through a three-dimensional model with speed has heightened the possibility to use section as a tool to inform the design process. Just as architects can use software to create and visualize complex forms, engineers can use computation to calculate loads and forces with the speed and certainty needed to ensure their structural integrity. In turn, the ease of the section process establishes a means to translate between digital space and material form. For instance, closely spaced sections taken in parallel are often used to break larger forms and spaces into discrete pieces that can be cut, printed, or made and then reassembled to realize the whole. This sectioning process is widespread in practice and has, in turn, become a recognizable, even cliched, aesthetic. 27 Yet the section cut is too often underused as a generative tool. In part, this is because the section is conceived as a software command, one among many built into the interface of the program. As such, section goes from being a site for invention to a resultant of the design process-the by-product of a visualization instruction. The discourse of architecture at the opening of the twenty-first century has, however, been witness to discernible trends in the approach to section that highlight tendencies toward formal complexity. These recognizable practices are often the result of accommodating the increasingly dense programmatic and per­ formative obligations of projects, enabled in part by increasingly sophisticated data and computational software. One identifiable approach is the stacking of nested sections of legible program-specific volumes or rooms (rather than floor plates) to compose an overall architectural figure. These buildings embrace the hegemony of the stack as a catalyst for experi­ mentation. Designed with a playfulness akin to building with children's blocks, these structures include MVRDV's Market Hall in Rotterdam, where the stacking of living units into an arc through horizontal shear forms a public canopy over a sandwich of retail and parking below. Howeler + Yoon Architecture deploys a combi­ nation of nest and vertical shear to creatively intertwine apart­ ments, working within site constraints. Alternatively, practices have explored the stacking of highly figural nested shapes that often do not fit together neatly.

The resulting section is an accumulation of figures set in tension with one another, where the individually shaped units remain discernible, as evident in WORKac's Nature-City project and Sou Fujimoto's Tokyo Apartment. In these designs, the accumula­ tion of a range of distinct interior spaces and their qualities is coextensive with the logic of the exterior form. ,el by 1se of digital irams to ~s of same- :rams ies that and realize, mplexity.

iensional ? section :ts can use iers can , speed and ; a means :or instance, j to break Je cut, Nhole. This in turn, the section :, this is :ind, one s such, ant of the ruction.

twenty-first 1ds in the ormal ,result of and per- 1creasingly 1 sections han floor se buildings ixperi- 1g with narket Hall n arc through :h of retail lYS a combi- 1e apart- of highly ally.

tin tension remain ,ct and Sou :umula- alities is 1 2 3 4 Development of the incline section has resulted in two related sectional trends, one more interior and the other more exterior. In the interior incline section model, architects have sought to extend the sloped floor to align with the shape of entire projects. Such designs turn the now familiar fusing of an inclined floor and wall via a fillet into a total project, with complex topo­ graphies enveloping and engaging all surfaces. Here the utility of the inclined section is coupled with a fully three-dimensional figure of continuity. Given the cost and complexity of these proj­ ects, such an approach is usually associated with significant cultural destinations, exemplified by Toyo Ito's Taichung Metro­ politan Opera House and Zaha Hadid's Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre. ln a related trope, the section is used to merge building and landscape, with the inclined floor exaggerated and sculpted rhetorically to emphasize the blurred relationship. 28 ln Steven Hall's Vanke Center, Sn¢hetta's Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, and Dominique Perrault's Ewha Womans University, por­ tions of the buildings' roofs are merged with landscape, complicat­ ing expectations of the ground plane through sectional mating. our intent with this book is to create an open-ended and flexible approach to section that can serve as a shared basis for analysis and critical discussion of this undertheorized architectural design tool. By outlining the history of section and articulating clear differences among section types through the creation of a classification structure, we can understand and explore section more precisely and creatively. lndeed 1 the contemporary practice of architecture, organized and transformed by digital technology, is especially in need of tools to study and examine sections.

Section is the critical means for considering the social, environmental, and material questions of our current century.

Designing and thinking through section establishes immediately a relationship among architectural form, interior space, and exterior site, where the consequences of scale are tangible and visceral. In the section, environmental and natural systems are described, engaged, and explored. Through section, the interplay of material invention and tectonic logic sets the stage for the framing of space and its use. As a cut into that which cannot be seen, the section embodies and reveals new territories for the continued architectural experimentation and exploration of our present future. Wolfgang Lotz, "The Rendering of the Interior in Architectural Drawings of the Renaissance," in Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture (Cambridge, MA, MIT, 1977), 1-65. Jacques Gui!lerme and Helene verin, "The Archaeology of Section," Perspecta 25 (1989), 226--57. Rem Koo!haas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan {New York: Monacelli, 1994), 157.

In 2003 the building was converted to a condominium. The friction between a condominium, where maximizing the plan's square footage is paramount, and this idiosyncratic section-now void of its programmatic substantiation but still present as structure-produced interesting anoma­ lies that were compounded by the facade's landmarked status. MVRDV, Market Hall, 2014 Zaha Hadid Architects, Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Genter, 2008 SnPhetta, Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, 2008 Steven Holl Architects, Vanke Genter, 2009 37 38 5 For a detailed presentation of a range of shaped sections in ceilings see Farshid Moussavi, The Function of Form {Barcelona: Actar and Harvqrd University Graduate School of Design, 2009). 6 Colin Rowe, "The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa," in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982), 11. It is debatable exactly how Rowe would argue that Palladio's Malcontenta is a free section or what he precisely means by free section, as in the essay he elaborates little on it beyond associating it with volumetric modeling.

7 Herman Hertzberger, Lessons for Students in Architecture (Rotterdam: 010, 1991), 202. 8 Hollywood's infatuation with using these spaces for action movies­ witness Die Hard, Mission Impossible, Sneakers, Speed, Salt, and Inception-speaks to their visual seductiveness, as they induce vertigo and exploit zones that are not normally visib!e in most buildings. 9 The celebrated section of Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation is a stack of Citrohans. These are vertically mirrored, leaving a void in plan every third floor. The plan voids form a hallway that feeds to pairs of apartments on the three floors. 10 Despite Le Corbusier's claim in the Oeuvre complete that the Villa Savoye possesses a "very slight inclined ramp which leads almost imperceptibly to the upper level," this ramp exceeds the 1:12 slope stipulated by today's code. At the current ratio, it would take 120 feet of run, or 65 feet in a cut-back ramp with landings, to rise 10 feet. 11 In this light, the proliferation of projects in which inclined surfaces are extended from floors to walls through fillets can be seen as an attempt to make the continuity more legible, even if that continuity is largely rhetorical.

12 Guillerme and verin, "Archaeology of Section." 13 James S. Ackerman, Origins, Imitations, Conventions (Cambridge, MA:

MIT, 2002). See also James S. Ackerman, "Villard de Honnecourt's Drawings of Reims Cathedral: A Study in Architectural Representation," Artibus et Historae 18, no. 35 (1997): 41-49. 14 Robin Evans, The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries (Cambridge, MA, MIT, 2000), ll8. 15 Guillerme and verin, "Archaeology of Section." 16 Tod A. Marder, "Bernini and Alexander VII: Criticism and Praise of the Pantheon in the Seventeenth Century," Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 628-45. 17 Lotz, "Rendering of the Interior." 18 Evans, Projective Cast, 118. 19 For more on the relationship between elevation, section, and perspective., see Evans, Projective Cast. 20 Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture (1570), trans. Richard Schofield and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002).

21 Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, vol. 2 (1872), trans. Benjamin Bucknall (Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1881).

See also Robin Middleton, "The Iron Structure of the BibliothE!que Sainte­ Genevieve as the Basis of a Civic Decor," AA Files 40 (2000): 33-52.

22 Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, 56. 23 Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, 58. 24 Andrew J. Tallon, "The Portuguese Precedent for Pierre Patte's Street Section," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 63, no. 3 (2004), 370-77. 25 Tallon, "Portuguese Precedent." Tallon argues that an earlier engineer, Eugenio dos Santos, was the first to design the urban section that influ­ enced Patte.

26 Eugene Henard, "The Cities of the Future," in Transactions: Town Planning Conference, London, 10-15 October 1910 (London: Royal Institute of British Architecture, 1911), 345-67. 27 Lisa Iwamoto, "Sectioning," in Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 17-41.

28 Stan Allen and Marc McQuade, eds., Landform Building(Baden: Lars MOiier, 2011). :ei!ings see td Harvard thematics of I, 11. It is ;ontenta is in the essay c modeling.

"Jtterdam:

ovfes­ and ice vertigo 1gs.

s a stack of n every third irtments on Villa Savoye 1perceptibly :ed by today's 5 feet in a rfaces are n attempt largely dge, MA, court's sentation," "ieometries ise of the >), 628-45.

perspective, 5. Richard ,r. 2 (1872), 1881).

eque Sainte­ , 33-52.

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