Hanoi Architectural University: Field Studies: 01 March 2017

ERSILIA diagrams and model

For next week: diagram, and then build an analytical model, of the alley.
Show:

: Circulation, marking path and quantity / intensity of circulation (yellow)

: Privacy thresholds and gradations coded (by size or thickness) for greater
or lesser privacy (gray)
: Enclosure, which affects light, privacy, ventilation, publicity and display
(black)
: Base, which represents ground (white)

Trading Cities 4
In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the citys life, the
inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or
black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a
relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings
become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the
inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and
their supports remain. From a mountainside, camping with their
household goods, Ersilias refugees look at the labyrinth of taut
strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still,
and they are nothing. They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a
similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex
and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they
abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.
Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the
ruins of the abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last,
without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs
of intricate relationships seeking a form.

Calvino, Italo (2013-08-12). Invisible Cities (p. 76). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle
Edition.

The original Ersilia model, from Calvinos text above, marked:

: blood: a family relationship

: trade: a commercial relationship
: authority: marking power relationships over one another
: agency: ability to act or take action

In your model, using the Ersilia story above as an example,

Build the buildings as well as the strings (the buildings have not yet
been dismantled at this stage of our story);

In the text above, only Calvinos strings, that define relationships, as well as
the strings supports, will eventually remain. Your models strings should be
black, yellow and grey (with the black and grey color going ALL THE WAY
THROUGH any board material you use

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Hanoi Architectural University: Field Studies: 01 March 2017

no white edges can show for the black and grey boards use markers to
make the edges black or grey, if needed). Use a clear material, if needed (like
Plexiglas) for string supports.

The Ersilia story can be thought of as a description of what architects do we

study life, and the structures accommodating life, as it exists around us. We
do this with respect and with an evolving understanding of the complex
relationships embedded within our world. We then try to make and remake
structures in ways that are more complex (addressing needs that the built
environment has not yet accommodated / inventing towards the articulation
of new needs) and yet more regular (made according to an architects and
societys order-finding and order-giving visions).

In this way we try to make the world at once more suitable and beautiful.