John Ronan.

I make a distinction between generated and interpreted diagrams. Generated diagrams clarify project intentions, and are reductive, isolating essential project issues for the purpose of clarifying and communicating critical ideas in short hand. Interpreted diagrams, on the other hand, suggest a new way of thinking about a project, their role being more transformative, causing the design process to shift in a new direction.

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Generated diagrams

These are initial diagrams (model and sketch, figs a and b) generated to study the organisation of the Perth Amboy High School project. The project, which explores the interface between the community and its high school, has a large and complex programme: a 50 000sqm secondary school for 3000 students broken down into six academies, with programmes and support facilities resembling a small city. The sketches represent the three discrete systems that would become the essential organisational model for the project, as illustrated in the more formalised diagram later in the process (fig c): the natural and constructed surface of the site (Mat), the interconnected volumes housing the programmatic requirements of the academies (Barscape), and the volumes housing the communal programmes shared by the school and the greater community (Towers).

Interpreted diagrams

The diagram (fig d) describes the daily schedule of a twelfth-century Cistercian monk, and explains the duration of activities in the course of a day contingent upon time of year. I find the diagram intriguing in the comprehensive way it maps human activity--in this case, The Rule of St Benedict--according to time, and the implications it holds for the spaces supporting these activities. The diagram was influential in the consideration of the programmatic occupation of the Activity Towers in the Perth Amboy project and the subsequent diagrams that resulted from this consideration.

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One of the goals of the Perth Amboy High School project was to encourage city residents to participate in the life of the school; to this effect, the design proposed that the communal functions of the school be shared with the larger community. These diagrams (fig e) speculate on the programmatic occupation of the project's Activity Towers, indicating the human activity taking place (in different towers) over the course of the day by disparate user groups (students, faculty, private citizens), and suggesting periods of interface between town residents and school members.

JOHN RONAN, JOHN RONAN ARCHITECT