If there is one phrase that might sum up the current architectural trend, it is ‘the intent to incline.’ This is the ambition to twist, skew, slant, slope, pitch, ramp, bank, tilt, angle, veer, incline, spiral, cant, curve, tip, bend, turn, slew, arc, swerve – do anything except construct a horizontal surface, a vertical plane, or any flat datum. The article on Rethinking the Flat Datum: Designing Space with Incline and Intent by Jonathan Yueng – see below – chooses these words, incline and intent, in its title, but concerns itself only with the fashion to deviate from the horizontal plane.
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Yeung writes poetically about the experience of the sloping surface using grandiloquent, rhapsodic terms, and provides numerous examples of inclined planes in recent projects, itemising the subject into sloping roofs; sloping interiors; and sloping public spaces. He uses lyrical words to present the case for sloping surfaces in projects instead of maintaining the historically favoured horizontal surface for habitation, pointing out that many so-called ‘horizontal’ surfaces are really sloping planes to enable drainage. It is a moot point, because one could argue that the earth is spherical; that all surfaces that we inhabit are curved: that horizontality is only an idea.
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What Yeung is praising is the slope that is obvious, readily perceived and experienced as a visual and physical intrigue, not the subtle variations for water flow, be this for everyday functions or merely safety purposes. He is interested only in the gradient that is noticed, observed to be different, felt: roofs that become . . .curved paths and sloped planes that choreograph distinct spatial and bodily experiences; and indoor sloping floors that are seen as . . . contoured treatments that can resonate more closely with a site's character.
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The question that Yeung asks is: How are these projects improving the experience of moving through architecture? – as if they might. Yeung sees the slope as relating to the different movement of the body through space, having a significant impact on this motion - to produce a faux-natural, meandering journey, suggesting that this might not be possible on a horizontal plane. The concept eventually becomes political, with the movement: giving visitors shifting vantage points and a way to engage space that feels less authoritarian than an unyielding flat floor. Here one recalls Frank Lloyd Wright’s story about walking with his uncle: in a straight line, noting how he learned of the rigour involved in intent. For Yeung, slopes hold a power over the body and the mind; they are transformative: Indoors, gentle gradients and micro-terraces define thresholds without walls, carve pockets for personal agency, and invite new ways of encountering art, furniture, and surfaces. They are different, a truism that he uses later to relate to constant change, although this might really be the repeated difference in the diversion from the horizontal with 2D inclines.
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One is left wondering why we even bother with the horizontal, given all these marked benefits with different gradients. It is Yeung’s seemingly endless hyperbole that eventually makes one question his enthusiasm for inclines, when he continues describing the roof as . . . embracing required slopes as a gently calibrated terrain that aligns with climate, drainage, and context. . . . As a walkable weave, the roof invites visitors to script their own routes—rising, dipping, and reconnecting. The description gets just a little too deliberately exotic; but still there is more, with: the subtly undulating ground is not only a way to negotiate the site's vast topography; its shifting elevations also help organize programs both beneath and above the surface . . . creating . . . a civic carpet that serves a wide spectrum of visitors. Here there is the suggestion that slopes are special and offer the ‘red carpet’ treatment for people – something like a transfiguration.
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Eventually Yeung becomes vaguely abstract, almost mystical in his exaggerated enthusiasm for the incline: By treating sloped circulation as social infrastructure—an armature for exercise, chance encounters, and outdoor programs—the project turns movement into public space. Just what Yeung means remains to be discovered, but it sounds grand.
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His exuberant words define the experience of walking on a slope, creating and changing the ‘curated’ story of the path, even grasping Heraclitus’s concept of not being able to step into a river twice, as an analogy for movement over a gradient that Yeung seems to assume is always a variable 3D rather than a consistent 2D surface. This assessment and analysis might be fine as an intellectual exercise, or an aesthetic appraisal, but what is the impact on the everyday, when one is confronted with the challenge of coping with the slopes? One immediately knows when one is on an inclined surface, be it 2D or 3D. There is that awareness, that self-conscious change of movement in the wholeness of the body’s poise that takes one’s attention away from meandering, distracting one from the private considerations of personal engagements as one goes about one’s daily grind; quietly contemplating the casual perusal of ponderings that linger in the mind. One is immediately alerted to the possibility of a fall or a slip and adjusts appropriately. Here one can recall that sudden shock of moving over a ramped floor in a shopping centre; or that jerk into a different understanding of place as one moves off the street into the plaza of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The change in movement alarms one; there is no choreography or creation in the meandering; one senses the change and makes a conscious variation to the gait to manage one’s equilibrium.
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Entering Pompidou, one immediately is stirred with the awareness of the discovery of the unexpected slope. From that point on, one is alert to how one steps. Consciousness is concentrated, not on the urban space or the 'architecture,' but on moving down or up, or along the slope. One might self-consciously even choose a diagonal path to better manage the gradient, with curating a path for aesthetic purposes being a luxury not made available by the challenge of necessity.
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One is doing everything other than considering the slope aesthetically out of the sheer physicality involved. It was Ananda Coomaraswamy who noted the philosophical/intellectual issues in aesthetic viewing itself, beyond ordinary experience, highlighting its problematical concerns.# Even without considering Coomaraswamy’s point in any detail, one forgets that the individual moving through place/space is otherwise engaged with life, not curating a pathway, choreographing distinct spatial and bodily experiences, or scripting their own routes. One merely walks, taking the path planned nonchalantly to get to where one is going, while thinking of the current events in one’s life and nonchalantly observing the world. Instead of being a meaningful, poetic intervention, the sloping surface is more a hindrance to wandering and pondering than a calculated, observed experiential journey of discovery.
One has to ask the question: Is this interest in sloping surfaces grabbing attention only because it is different? We have seen fashions promoting forms that are distorted by bends, curves, etc. in all types of quirky ways. Is it a case of, when there is nothing else to skew, try twisting the world? This is 'architecture' by ME, for the ME; to be considered and noticed for its clever variations; its surprising differences that declare: LOOK AT ME! Experience is rooted in one, the individual, and can be spoken about in this way, but society/culture relies on a shared experience. Teung’s special way of seeing is an acquired position; slopes have no inherent necessity in regards to the everyday other than being exhibitionist when manipulated self-consciously, for clever display. We have conventions like language that enable us to share, with meaning lying in agreement. The problem with concentrating on MY peculiar experience is that one gets that statement: “I know what I am saying,” as though another’s lack of comprehension is irrelevant; it is your problem that you fail to understand or experience in a particular way; MY way.
One has to ask: Will everyone enjoy relaxing on the slope when something rolls off downhill, or when one's orientation for balance is disturbed? One sits on a slope in a particular manner in order to properly and comfortably manage the body’s stresses and balance. This settling on a slope raises issues that need attention – how to locate, and where to be placed for stability and equilibrium. The slope will define the angle of repose of the body that is sensed as being the most stable. Flat or near flat - read horizontal - surfaces were not developed and used for no reason. Today's interest in skews seems to be yet more of ‘How can I be totally different’ – a one-off Grand Design.* One might suggest that the world is being McClouded – entertained with quirky difference, and a lack of deference that creates a cloud of uncertain experiences, each struggling for attention.
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And as I struggle with the loaded shopping trolley across a sloping footpath, I wonder about creating my path just to make moving forward possible, instead of sliding sideways. This is no aesthetic choice; the slope forces me to manage the trolley appropriately, awkwardly, not ponder any vague poetic path: the incline becomes a true nuisance. Then it hits me: what about all of these wondrous bespoke slopes and disabled access? Has everyone forgotten about these folk now that they have achieved general recognition with codes and legal requirements being enforced? One now recalls all of the special barriers, warnings, and rails, etc. required to make disabled access possible and safe; but now all this seems to have gone out of fashion, careless of experience and performance other than curated aesthetic visions for ME; something different every minute of every day, like new architecture: the ‘grand’ design theory. How might these admired slopes be managed by the disabled?
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For Yeung, slopes seem to be something to grasp for a PhD study, or for ME to have a completely new view of the world, never before seen: WOW! – perhaps both? It’s not like stepping into a river; it might be said to be “ever new,” but the experience lacks the flow of life, that reality of permanence in changing change: the Eternal Present. We should never become just too clever with our words and belittle meaning for our own benefit.
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The layered experience of moving through these buildings makes repetition unlikely, if not impossible; the path you curate for yourself is rarely identical from one visit to the next.
The sloping surface, beyond curating the experiential journey and creating pockets of space, also alludes to the continuity of the environment and site.
The text has something of the flavour of Eliot’s lines:
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
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Alas, with slopes, this could very well become a reality as a fact.
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Yeung’s reference to the Sydney Modern – now named Naala Badu: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/05/more-on-sydney-modern-ai.html - highlights the exaggerated exuberance of the text that glosses over the reality of the everyday.
By contrast, later projects by SANAA and Ryue Nishizawa push the ground plane to the opposite extreme, aiming to create as many distinct spatial moments as possible so the sameness never settles in—much like a river you can't step into twice.
. . .
in the case of the Sydney Modern Museum, cascading architectural volumes respond to the site's unique slope. Through the careful articulation of non-flat entry surfaces, the building invites visitors to roll in and roll down into the museum, testing the limits of inclined planes and the tolerances of furniture. More importantly, it reminds visitors of the site's particular condition: one arrives from the hillside and moves toward the waterfront. The ground is not flat, and that simple agenda is clearly and powerfully articulated, curated, and enacted at the museum's threshold.
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One has to point out that the museum is separated from the harbour by a string of apartments; that the waterfront has no essential intimacy with the art gallery extension that is again illustrated by the drone shot. One struggles to hold any image of this building as a passerby, the individual who will experience this ‘cascade.’
While spoken of as the new Opera House – no more needs to be said about this building, such is its iconic status – this $344 million art gallery expansion holds nothing memorable in its imagery other than the aerial view – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/02/thoughts-on-sydney-modern.html - and Yeung’s intellectual explanation of it as a cascade: a place for one to roll in and roll down: the words suggest drunkenness. The slope always takes over, such is its power of difference that has become the new intrigue in architecture, as the copious number of projects referenced by Yeung in his text proves. We find ourselves swept up in this enthusiasm for ‘design’s newest obsession.’*
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#
To equate the love of art with a love of fine sensations is to make of works of art a kind of aphrodisiac. The words “disinterested aesthetic contemplation” are a contradiction in terms and a pure non-sense.
“A Figure of Speech, or a Figure of Thought?”
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
*
Design is constantly seeking things new to keep being different: see -
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/caveman-core-design-trend
Headline: Design’s Newest Obsession Goes Back—Way Back.
It is interesting to observe that the incline is always referenced to the horizontal, with its deviation from the horizontal being identified in degrees.
THE CENTRE OF THE ROAD
The problem with slopes was highlighted for me by the guide in a wheelchair who took me around the campus prior to my commencing the review of the whole university that resulted in a report outlining all of the access issues that needed attention, both inside buildings and outside. This guide was skilled in the operation of his wheelchair, and proudly showed how he could bounce down flights of stairs in plaza areas; but it was the challenge with slopes that proved to be the greatest bugbear.
While attempting to traverse a sloping surface, it was pointed out how the natural forward path for the wheelchair was a zigzag, with the movement down the slope constantly being corrected to maintain the route. It was this problem that explained this guide’s preference for choosing the centre of the road for travel, with the crown of the road providing an arc that did not manoeuvre the wheelchair off to one side or the other. Here one could truly move forward in a straight line.
THE ARTICLE
https://www.archdaily.com/1035411/rethinking-the-flat-datum-designing-space-with-incline-and-intent
Rethinking the Flat Datum: Designing Space with Incline and Intent
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Office in Sanno / Studio Velocity. Image Courtesy of Studio Velocity
Written by Jonathan Yeung
Published on October 27, 2025
Historically, architecture and the built environment have insisted on creating flat, hard surfaces. In earlier eras, walking without paved ground meant mud-caked shoes, uneven footing, tripping hazards, standing water after rain, and high maintenance. Hence, as we shaped cities, we prioritized a smooth, continuous, solid horizontal datum. The benefits are real: easier walking, simpler cleaning, and straightforward programming—furniture, equipment, and partitions all prefer a level base. This universal preference for building on flat ground remains the norm and, for many practical reasons, will likely continue to be.
What's less recognized is that making a truly flat surface is surprisingly difficult—and many well-executed "flat" floors aren't perfectly flat at all. They are often gently sloped, calibrated to precise gradients for drainage. While interior spaces do not always require this, many ground floors and wet areas do incorporate subtle inclines as a safeguard—whether for minor flooding or to manage water that overflows from the street or plumbing when one of the discharge systems is malfunctioning.
Quietly, a number of ambitious projects are challenging the tyranny of the perfectly flat floor. Architects are reclaiming roofs as walkable terrain: because roofs typically can't be perfectly level for drainage, they become logical testbeds for curved paths and sloped planes that choreograph distinct spatial and bodily experiences. The idea has extended beyond rooftops to exterior ground surfaces, where drainage needs likewise justify—and inspire—more contoured treatments that can resonate more closely with a site's character. Even indoors—though far less common—some projects now sculpt floor plates with gentle gradients and micro-topographies, contoured treatments that can resonate more closely with a site's character.
How are these projects improving the experience of moving through architecture? Designers have pursued several tactics. Some align topography and building into a seamless whole, letting required slopes read as natural extensions of the site. Others deliberately sculpt both façade and ground plane to produce a faux-natural, meandering journey. Many enlist the roof—already sloped for drainage—as a public promenade, giving visitors shifting vantage points and a way to engage space that feels less authoritarian than an unyielding flat floor. Indoors, gentle gradients and micro-terraces define thresholds without walls, carve pockets for personal agency, and invite new ways of encountering art, furniture, and surfaces.
Yoshino Nursery School and Kindergarten / Tezuka Architects. Image © Katsuhisa Kida
Elevated Commons: Occupying the undulating Fifth Elevation
What would it take to turn a building's subtle necessities into distinctive experiences—amplifying them to invite new ways of use, even a sense of freedom? One powerful tactic is the occupiable roof: embracing required slopes as a gently calibrated terrain that aligns with climate, drainage, and context. More than a gesture, opening the roof to people does add cost, but it repays that investment by expanding how users inhabit the architecture and engage the surrounding environment.
A widely cited precedent is Tezuka Architects' Fuji Kindergarten (2007), which pioneered a liberating roofscape where children run freely, weave around existing trees, and discover nooks formed by skylights and plantings. The softly sloped loop becomes both playground and arguably, an outdoor classroom. Less known—but arguably equally empowering—is their Yoshino Nursery School and Kindergarten, where steeper roof inclines physically connect to the ground plane. By merging roof and site, the building extends the landscape itself, allowing children to move seamlessly between levels and experience the architecture as an open, continuous field rather than a set of bounded rooms.
Yoshino Nursery School and Kindergarten / Tezuka Architects. Image © Katsuhisa Kida
At the Site Verrier de Meisenthal, SO–IL and FREAKS Architecture wrap the new cultural center extension in a continuous, occupiable roof. The undulating surface does more than cap an addition to the 18th-century glassworks; it stitches otherwise separate buildings and grounds into a single, legible campus. As a walkable weave, the roof invites visitors to script their own routes—rising, dipping, and reconnecting—to rediscover the factory from shifting vantage points a conventional flat datum could never offer.
Site Verrier de Meisenthal / SO-IL + FREAKS Architecture. Image © Iwan Baan
Less commonly explored is merging structural performance to the roof's uniquely non-flat form. In Studio Velocity's Office in Sanno, a deliberately curved, walkable roof does more than shelter the office below: it becomes a liberating terrain where staff can step away from desks, engage the surrounding context, and curate their own niches through loose furniture, the roof's natural gradients, and punctuating plantings. Structurally, the roof and timber beams are held in a calibrated equilibrium by vertical members that act in tension when the roof is lightly used—subtly "pulling" the surface into shape—and shift to compression as people gather, supporting the load. The result is a layered dynamism: geometry tuned to the site, occupation that grants users spatial agency, and a quiet, constantly adjusting balance of tension and compression that holds the roof's silhouette in place.
Office in Sanno / Studio Velocity. Image Courtesy of Studio Velocity
Office in Sanno / Studio Velocity. Image Courtesy of Studio Velocity
Office in Sanno / Studio Velocity. Image Courtesy of Studio Velocity
Yoshino Nursery School and Kindergarten / Tezuka Architects
Yoshino Nursery School and Kindergarten / Tezuka Architects. Image © Katsuhisa Kida
Site Verrier de Meisenthal / SO-IL + FREAKS Architecture
Site Verrier de Meisenthal / SO-IL + FREAKS Architecture. Image © Iwan Baan
Gammel Hellerup Gymnasium / BIG
Gammel Hellerup Gymnasium / BIG. Image © Jens Lindhe
Office in Sanno / Studio Velocity
Civic Carpets: Non-Flat Surfaces as Public Program and Civic Agency
Beyond roofs, many offices are testing expansive outdoor planes that gently slope and shape themselves to cultivate community. At Mecanoo's National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), the subtly undulating ground is not only a way to negotiate the site's vast topography; its shifting elevations also help organize programs both beneath and above the surface. By liberating the ground from an unyieldingly flat datum, uses of different heights and performance needs can be flexibly tucked under or set upon the terrain. The approach aligns with the building's formal expression while turning the surface into a civic carpet that serves a wide spectrum of visitors—at times a market plaza, at others a picnic field, and, when needed, an amphitheater. The undulations stitch together multiple edges of the building and site, making an otherwise monumental arts center more porous, welcoming, and empowering.
National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts / Mecanoo. Image Courtesy of Mecanoo
A more structured example is Jiakun Architects' West Village—Basis Yard, where a network of long outdoor ramps activates, loops, and connects the campus to form an elevated promenade for the community. The intertwined ramps become the project's most porous façade, opening an otherwise inward-looking complex to its larger urban context. By treating sloped circulation as social infrastructure—an armature for exercise, chance encounters, and outdoor programs—the project turns movement into public space, inviting rapid engagement while binding the site into a coherent, walkable whole.
West Village - Basis Yard / Jiakun Architects. Image © ArchExist
National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts / Mecanoo
National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts / Mecanoo. Image Courtesy of Mecanoo
West Village - Basis Yard / Jiakun Architects
West Village - Basis Yard / Jiakun Architects. Image © ArchExist
Four Car Parks / Christian Kerez
Four Car Parks / Christian Kerez. Image © Maxime Delvaux
Grace Farms / SANAA
Grace Farms / SANAA. Image © Iwan Baan
The Interior Landscape: Elevation Shifts that Define Space
When discussing sloping architecture, the most legendary example has to be Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York. Its distinct form, strikingly white façade, continuous interior ramp, and the painstaking task of installing artworks along a constantly tilted promenade make it an icon of the type. Arguably, though, Wright's slopes are about continuity and the longevity of a single route rather than the varied, empowering experiences seen in other examples. The ramp remains largely consistent, opening slightly toward the atrium and the exterior; most of the time, walking it on the fifth floor feels much like the second. That was the intent—and the magic—of the museum: an unending journey of art in a spatial condition that remains steady through the sloping surface.
By contrast, later projects by SANAA and Ryue Nishizawa push the ground plane to the opposite extreme, aiming to create as many distinct spatial moments as possible so the sameness never settles in—much like a river you can't step into twice. In the Hiroshi Senju Museum and the Rolex Learning Center, the sloped surface embraces site conditions while empowering a spectrum of nooks and territories. Separation is achieved not only by walls or furniture but by subtle shifts in elevation height and section. The layered experience of moving through these buildings makes repetition unlikely, if not impossible; the path you curate for yourself is rarely identical from one visit to the next.
Hiroshi Senju Museum / Ryue Nishizawa. Image © Iwan Baan
Rolex Learning Center / SANAA. Image © Iwan Baan
The sloping surface, beyond curating the experiential journey and creating pockets of space, also alludes to the continuity of the environment and site. Different from Grace Farms—where the interior remains largely flat while the exterior follows the surrounding topography—in the case of the Sydney Modern Museum, cascading architectural volumes respond to the site's unique slope. Through the careful articulation of non-flat entry surfaces, the building invites visitors to roll in and roll down into the museum, testing the limits of inclined planes and the tolerances of furniture. More importantly, it reminds visitors of the site's particular condition: one arrives from the hillside and moves toward the waterfront. The ground is not flat, and that simple agenda is clearly and powerfully articulated, curated, and enacted at the museum's threshold.
Sydney Modern Museum / SANAA. Image © Iwan Baan
Sydney Modern Museum / SANAA. Image © Iwan Baan
AD Classics: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum / Frank Lloyd Wright
AD Classics: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum / Frank Lloyd Wright. Image © Creative Commons
Zaishui Art Museum / junya ishigami + associates
Zaishui Art Museum / junya ishigami + associates. Image © ArchExist
Sydney Modern Museum / SANAA
Sydney Modern Museum / SANAA. Image © Iwan Baan
Hiroshi Senju Museum / Ryue Nishizawa
Hiroshi Senju Museum / Ryue Nishizawa. Image © Iwan Baan
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