UK schools' projects, as we know, are as amazing for the strength and ingeniousity of their narratives than for their concern for interesting and evocative means of representations. In this regard, the Monastery of Irrigation by Alistair Williams (also selected by the President's Medals and also for the University of Westminster) is striking for its use of an hybrid of hand drawing and computer generated images, thus creating a unique poetic vocabulary serving the program. The latter is a building that organizes its monastic life around water rhythm and power.Everything in this architecture recounts the calm and the insular aspect of the monastery which is to be contrasted with the talkative vocabulary used by urban cathedral recently designed by Hernan Diaz Alonzo's studios or Tobias Klein and Jordan Hodgson respectively at the Bartlett and the Royal College of Arts (see previous article).
In the same spirit, one would like to (re)read the article about Chen Xinyang's Space Monastery/Prison project at Pratt Institute.
text by Alistair Williams:
Is there no larger and more encompassing creative element in this world than nature and its perpetual interplay between ourselves and the lives we build? What is a more vibrant, energising icon for nature than the movement and constant renewal of water? It moves through, around, under, over and binds us together. It connects all living beings through a central need, a chemical desire that allows us to grow, to build and strengthen.
The Monastery of Irrigation is imbued with water. It flows around and through, powers and feeds it. It offers aesthetical and spiritual planes. It surrounds and embraces the cold and stark concrete, offering on those blank surfaces, a plane on which light can reflect and play with the water’s shimmering surfaces. Every surface is alive, perpetually moving and giving the building the perception of continual growth and energy.
The realignment of the traditional cloisters, cells and chapel propels the building forward, out of tradition and the esoteric, out of history and into the future, where belief stems from a practical relationship with the world.
It is a building of contrasts, underneath the tones of cascading water lies the mechanical percussive heart of the building. Water transforms from the musical or visual, into something vastly powerful and energising. Again it has the potential to change; the vast water powered pipe organ system, illustrates how water, away from its own natural lyricism, can power and project sound around the entire building. Water’s influence can never be disguised or hidden, it flows inextricably with the building itself.
Due to the adaptable design the monastery can project itself outside its own construction to mark and impact any environment. When the concept is multiplied it increases the inherent power of water.
Water reminds us of our place within something greater, something far beyond our comprehension, something beautiful and powerful. We live and build because of it.
To live by a large river is to be kept in the heart of things.
We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
As the sun doth daily rise, Brightening all the morning skies, So to Thee with one accord Lift we up our hearts, O Lord.
Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole.
Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.
The highest type of efficiency is that which can utilize existing material to the best advantage.
Pass the sugar please?
Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context, a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment,
A message prepared in the mind reaches a mind; a message prepared in a life reaches a life.
Moonlit Sailing
High Water
Low Water
Burial at Sea
