Utzon - When all parts find their expression

Additive architecture was one of J?rn Utzon’s philosophies coming to show in his work. He worked with this principle on the Parliament Building in Kuwait, the School Complex in Herning among others.

We’ll get back to that later but first, we have to know what additive architecture is.

What is additive architecture?

For Utzon, the additive principle respected the tenet of functionalism. For him, it was the essential background to true architecture.

He said, “When working with the additive principle, one is able, without difficulty, to respect and honour all the demands made on design and layout as well as all the requirements for extensions and modifications.”

But why is that? Utzon continues, “This is because the architecture - or perhaps rather the character - of the building is in the summation of the components, and not in the composition, nor is it dictated by the facade.” 

This results in a holistic experience where every part finds its own expression and add to a whole. One does not sin against the right of existence of the individual components. 

From a more economic and production oriented perspective, the use of the additive principle also benefits in other ways. "A consistent utilization of industrially produced building components can only be achieved if these components can be added to the buildings without having to be cut to measure or adapted in any way”, Utzon says.

“Like a glove that fits the hand, this game matches the demands of our age for freedom in the design of buildings and a strong desire for getting away from the box-type house where the box has a given size and is subdivided by partitions in the traditional way.”

 “The projects show the degree of freedom that can be achieved with the additive principle in tackling greatly varying tasks. They also demonstrate the vital problems associated with the design of units or components, and provide some indication of the advantages in respect of production control, costs and erection time that can be achieved in comparison with a group of buildings constructed in purely artisan fashion."

How did it come to show in his work?

Let us now look at two of Utzon’s works that demonstrate the additive architectural philosophy. We begin in Denmark, more specifically The School Complex in Herning.

Each room needed its own expression and completely free choice in terms of height, size, and lighting. However, all these different types of rooms had to come together, link up on a common denominator and become additive so they contributed to a whole.

“The common denominator is a horizontal frame at door level, resting on posts at the corners of the rooms. Above and on this frame, the roof is freely developed to meet the volume and lighting requirements; below the frame, in the bays between the columns, the rooms can be freely connected with each other or with the outside by means of non-bearing elements, as the load bearing function is exclusively assigned to the frame and the four columns.”

Based on the additive principle, it is possible the continuously expand and modify a house, a group of buildings or a town.

Read and see more on the School Complex in Herning at www.utzonphotos.com 

Another example of additive architecture is the Parliament Building in Kuwait. Utzon explains about the small sketches, ”You can right from the start see the big wall and how you fill the various sections, for I wanted to express the various sections with their dimensions, their lighting and with their dependence on each other by arranging them inside streets going out from the central street.”

”That is to say that in fact it turned into a jigsaw puzzle for the client, who could himself choose whether he wanted this or that and arrange the sections just as clearly as a tree expressed itself – trunk and branches, and the leaves and the fruit, so that at any time it was possible to move things around and build on. And that happened of course over the many years we worked on it and then it developed in different ways. And this is one of the stages. At one time we reached the final project, the blue book. And then they could always add on, of course.”

More on the Parliament Building in Kuwait at www.utzonphotos.com.

Hungry for more? Read about Utzon's take on the "Essence of Architecture" or his use of platforms and plateaus.