A Roof Building Design, Domestic Features, Elements of Architecture, Images

A Roof – Architecture Elements

Elements of Architecture – design by Ali Afsarmanesh + Ali Fouladi + Anahita Rouzbeh

8 Jun 2017

A Roof – Building Design Article

Design: Ali Afsarmanesh + Ali Fouladi + Anahita Rouzbeh

A Roof

All the concepts used to pull architecture together into a single entity have become non-architectural—economy, sustainability, efficiency, security, and, in a broader sense, property—and all have packaged and commodified buildings into singular enclosures.

As there is always an economic will behind architecture, a building is property before it is architecture. It is ‘one’ not because it is architecture but because it is property.

To think of a roof as one continuous surface is to think of it within the linear system of causality. Architecture has been considered from the viewpoint of intention; here, that means finding an object (i.e., a surface) that covers. Taking the oneness as given and then look for the ‘one’ that covers is a common practice among today’s architects.

Our understanding is the opposite. In reversed nonlinearity, we look at the roof from the opposite end, at its consequence—that is, its footprint.
The meaning of ‘oneness’ has been misinterpreted; the term has been taken to mean a unified phenomenon. One roof is commonly considered to indicate one unified roof; however, one roof actually means one footprint.

Here, our greatest achievement is to place three dissociated objects on the site and understand them as one roof since they form a single footprint. Consistency is as subjective as oneness. The most objective view is to realize that the oneness of the roof as a form, is dissociated from its meaning, from roof as cover.

Mainstream architecture today is based on the unspoken premise that it is a continuous form. Every linear diagram of design processes we see today is clear evidence of this. The paradox of such approaches is in their claims of not enforcing any form‒the claim that everything factual, even scientific, determines the design.

Yet, what is behind such claims is still form, which legitimizes the design and keeps it together. To pull out the string of continuity (which is nothing but a formal gesture) from the stacked backbones of these initial premises is to dismantle them and break them apart, is to reveal their hypocrisy and their concealed lack of authorship.

Every attempt to retain architecture as a singular continuous form must be redirected by a new objectivity that takes no interest in such ends but rather sees greater potential in fragments that are freed to be themselves without any concern about forming a homogeneous continuous whole.