Warped Space and the Death Cube "K"

In Vidler's introduction, he takes a stance of not judging the morphological forms of modern contemporary architecture, but he prepares himself to describe the reason behind both the form and the "stylistic movement".

"The intersection of spatial thought with psychoanalytical though, of the nature of constrainment and the characteristics of the subject, has been a preoccupation of social and aesthetic discourse since the turn of the century; certain of the avant-garde movement of the 1920s and the 1930s, among them expressionism, explored this intersection in terms of its representation; contemporary experimentation preserves these two terms, while distorting the traditional space of modernism and questioning the equally traditional fiction of the humanist subject. The results in each case, theoretically or in design, have been the production of a kind of warping, which I have called warped space."

The warped space is already a condition beyond convention. From there, Vidler makes two more distinctions of this modern condition. The first describes warped space as a "projection of the [human] subject", which associates with the distortion of figures and spaces as the result of the human psychology. The second describes warped space as a "response to the need to depict space in new and unparallel ways," as done by artists (and architects) finding new media and methods of representation in depicting 2-d and 3-d spatial conditions. The two warpings are together differenced to be "psychological and artistic."

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In the reading of Vidler's "Death Cube 'K'" I am mainly concerned about two topics in detail, the treatment of typology in modernity and the conceptual treatments of the wall and floor.

In tradition the perception of types in architecture is a mean to idealize the conditions of an urban environment to be something of an Utopia. By providing a set typology for architecture, buildings then can fall into neat categories that can abstract the fabric of a city to be a rational but idealized environment.

Whereas by artistic license, the avant-garde can break the ideals of types and create new, strange and unfamiliar forms for pre-existing functions. The break away from tradition exemplifies the products of post-modernism.

And Morphosis in their conception of projects transforms the environments of existing, traditional types, into more something more exciting. Whether this is the establishment of new types, as all predecessors should follow, or the upkeep of existing types is unclear. Or perhaps the iconic and morphological nature of the firm's projects on sites of significant natural conditions is a type in itself? (see Diamond Ranch High School on the fault line or the Spreebogen project in Berlin)


The wall and the floor, and the treatment and conception thereof, are both issues of modern architecture (described by Vidler) but also issues of prolonged architectural practice and convention. The floor plan and the section are classical conventions of conveying ideals through orthographic representation. As occupants of buildings, the human experience between the wall and the floor are different. Humans do not treat walls and floors similarly by use alone. But in architectural graphics, the wall and the floor are in fact the same, as they are both elements of thickness and containment. So for the architects who already understand the floor plan and the building section as the same concept, then the argument by Vidler in describing Morphosis' literal treatment of the wall and the floor as the same would be easier to conceive.

Practical concerns aside, the wall and the floor are same elements in architecture. They create and divide space for humans to inhabit. So then it is logical to believe that walls and floors can be treated the same, whether in material, form or complexity.