Reflecting and multiplicity: Peter Smithon’s empoolings

Abstract

In April 1997, Peter Smithson gave a lecture entitled Empooling. He pointed out that this term was meant to: “where there is a sandy beach with rocks standing-up from it, as the tide recedes small formation of the building carry with it an empooling of the space-between. And as with the rock-pools what it within space-between seems extraordinarily vivid”.
The word was used to explain the works that they had done in the Tecta Factory. He defined three empoolings: the first was a polished stainless steel plate located at the entrance of the factory, so that it reflected everything that was placed in front of it; the second was a porch that allowed to see the landscape from inside the factory, from the toilets, and the third was a light and elevated lookout located in the garden court of the factory to view the countryside beyond its limits.
These three little works show us different strategies where they try to find a way to enrich the space-between defined by the building, a seventies factory without any interest. For this, a kind of “empooling” is built in order to improve the building’s relationships with its surroundings, as well as to qualify everyday life of workers inside the factory. As it happens in the whole of the Smithsons’ work, the project focuses on two principles: the understanding of architecture as an inseparable part of the space around and the consideration of inhabitants and their acts as incentive for their designs, obviating the objectification of architecture.
The procedure, that they used to achieve these objectives, show us how one purpose can be made of different ways, teaching us architecture transpositions are not always linear.