THE FOURTH DIMENSION

The issue of site in architecture is also an issue of dimensions, not only the three spatial dimensions but also time. The first dimension is hardly ever explored alone, it needs the second dimension to start informing about the physical conditions of the site, such as building rules, accesses etc.; the third dimension adds information about the topography, cityscape, spatial interactions with neighbors; the fourth, time, is more commonly referred to the history of the place. In this sense, architecture is a future speculation of a physical condition, to be changed by humans.

Site analyses are useful to enable the architect to propose a solution that responds to the problems inherited to the site. The further the analysis expands in terms of scales (spatial and temporal) the less precise is the answer, in other words, it becomes generic.There must be, however, a balance in the use of precedents from all the different scales. If it may be generic, it can also fall into a repetitive condition when the scale is too narrow.

When Brasilia was designed by Lucio Costa, some of the main references cited by the author transit throughout a wide spectrum of scales. The shape of the city was curved to meet the topography and approximate the future residents to the man-made lake Paranoa. The curvy roads of the superquadras —the residential scale of the city— were based on the same curvy streets of the colonial cities of the Brazilian hinterland. While the limit of six floors to the buildings in the same superquadras were a clear reference to European cities.

What the project may have lacked was to explore the fourth dimension towards the future. The city was envisioned in its complete form, when cities are in constant process of expansion or refraction, very rarely static. It may even sound naïve for an architect to think of the future in a static way, yet that is what architecture is about, the tendency is to speculate the future based on current trends. Brasilia was designed for cars, but today the supremacy of the automobile is being questioned.

In the same city and during the same period, Oscar Niemeyer, also the architect of the main buildings in Brasilia, designs the main building for the University of Brasilia, the Institute of Central Sciences, its final shape, though, was unknown. A long set of arcades would be the frame for further additions based on the needs of each department or school in that building. The argument behind it was that the diversity of functions and the dynamicity of an academic environment should dictate the ever changing form, hence expressing the inventiviness of the academia.

Anthropic spaces are the result of collective actions throughout time. Once Architecture is understood as the design of spaces, then it’s implicit that the discipline should be the result of a collective interest.