FALL 08 - SPRING 09
Studio YAEL EREL and CHRISTOPH a. KUMPUSCH
THESIS PROJECT RESEARCH / THESIS
FALL 08 - SPRING 09
Studio YAEL EREL and CHRISTOPH a. KUMPUSCH
THESIS PROJECT RESEARCH / THESIS
i路 de路 a -noun
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity. A thought, conception, or notion. An impression. An opinion, view, or belief. A private mental object, regarded as the immediate object of thought or perception.
i路 de路 al -noun
1. A conception of something in its perfection. 2. A standard of perfection or excellence -adjective
1. Conceived as constituting a standard of perfection or excellence. 2. Existing only in the imagination; not real or actual. 3. Existing as an archetypal idea.
IDEA(L) Exploring architecture as the tension between two poles (the abstract idea and the site); individual explorations of pure ideas confront a gritty physical site. Through the lens of an abstract idea, sites are read as the ground for establishing a thesis. Sites are read as artifact, political interface, tectonic condition, or historical scape. Each understanding of site generates its own architectural meaning. The program amplifies the architectural identity, understanding of the ground, and begins to question both the site and the original abstract seed. In the studio, we probe the universal questions emerging from this interface of concept and ground while bringing to the surface issues of typology, urbanism, and tectonics.
www. idea-l . org
RUINS
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE : SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI Laura Haak
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
Roger Reichard
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
Mike Ritchie
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, BABIL PROVINCE
Jeanne Chiang
FIELDS
WEAVING & UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE Areum Han
INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
Lev Belman
HORIZONS
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
Irene Chin
PRESSING OF SPACE
BORDERS
Steven Pitera
U.S./ MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES Jacqueline Palavacino
BORDERS Maya Bartur
010
068
104
144
168
200
216
254
280
298
IDEA(L)
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE : SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI Laura Haak
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
Roger Reichard
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
Mike Ritchie
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, BABIL PROVINCE
Jeanne Chiang
WEAVING & UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
Areum Han
010
068
104
144
168
INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
200
Lev Belman
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
Irene Chin
PRESSING OF SPACE
216
254
Steven Pitera
U.S./ MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES Jacqueline Palavacino
280
BORDERS
298
Maya Bartur
ru 路 in -noun
1. Total destruction or disintegration, either physical, moral, social, or economic. 2. A cause of total destruction. 3. The act of destroying totally. 4. A destroyed person, object, or building. 5. The remains of something destroyed, disintegrated, or decayed.
RUINS
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE
In the 1950’s, the city of Detroit’s population began rapidly leaving the city in favor of the suburbs, leaving the city center largely vacant with the majority of the population pushing towards the periphery of the city and surrounding suburbs. As a response to this urban abandonment, the city began a process of self-erasure through demolition, unsanctioned fires, and natural decay, leaving the city perforated with parcels of urban absence. This process of gradual erasure has pushed Detroit into a state of post-urban anxiety. This absence within the city fosters a latent presence materialized cerebrally, causing Detroit to become a phantom city.
My thesis proposes a method of dealing with absence in Detroit, Michigan through strategies of removal, traces, and silence. Through a large scale removal of abandoned urban material, a “terrain vague” will begin to grow throughout the city. This post-urban landscape will operate in the spaces between buildings, infrastructural systems, and natural ecologies while allowing for a gradient shift from the urban to the rural as the city’s population continues to shrink. These tectonic removals at the urban scale will operate As presence is the point of reference for sensing absence, the presence of the uninhabited past creates the absence within the city that only removal can begin to cleanse.
My proposal for Detroit is the growth of a new landscape into the city that will allow for the transformation of the post-urban condition through a cultivation of silence in Detroit’s vast landscape. Silence, at an architectural scale, is achieved by methods of sound absorption: anechoic chambers where all surfaces are treated with sound absorbing materials and geometry in order to completely absorb all echoes within a space. At an urban scale, silence is created not through absorption, to eliminate echoes, but through a complete removal of echoic material. This method of silence created through removal creates vast expanses where sound never reaches a surface to reflect back from. My thesis attempts to cultivate urban silence in Detroit through the removal of the posturban remains of the once industrial city. This process of cultivating silence in the city will allow Detroit to transition from an obsolete urban entity back to a functioning ecology. The growth of this landscape not only attempts to heal Detroit psychologically, but also physically through the cleansing of derelict land for potential futures through the use of phytoremediation: the restoration of balance through planting. Detroit’s brownfield condition could be cleansed over time through absorption and allow for potential future uses of Detroit’s derelict land.
[01] Layered mapping of Detroit, MI using removal and shadow as a means of mapping the city. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 11 x 44 in.
010
Silence in Detroit, Michigan Laura Haak
LAURA HAAK
The augmentation of the landscape into the city will begin to transform from a series of isolated urban green spaces into a connected rural landscape. As this landscape network grows, Detroit’s urban remains will be absorbed into landscape until the urban memory of the city will fade into an amnesic landscape, leaving only select remnants of the city behind. This landscape will attempt to heal Detroit in both a corporeal and psychological sense. Through phytoremediation –the restoration of balance through planting– the city’s brownfield condition will be cleansed overtime through the absorption of the landscape and allow for potential futures from the derelict land. This will transform the urban figure-ground through the movement of a gradient as it dissolves the rigid city grid, allowing Detroit to transition between the presence of absence to an absence of presence.
013
[02] Detail of model of the Michigan Central Depot area of Detroit, MI in 1950 exploring silence and urban removals in the landscape. Basswood and Cast Resin, 22 x 22 in.
This transition from an urban condition to a raw landscape will occur not through an abrupt transformation, but through a temporal gradient shift. This gradational fluctuation between urban and rural allows for a programmatic shift of landscape in conjunction with urban erasure. As the unbuilding of the city occurs over time, the city will become perforated with small scale voids throughout the urban context. These initial landscape moments will function as public plazas, urban park spaces, and city gardens. As more buildings are removed from the city, unnecessary infrastructure will begin to be absorbed into the landscape as well, creating a network of landscape connections throughout the city.
This precedent study led me to an initial exploration of the concept of absence through the dissection of found materials including books. In my first model, Hanibal Lector’s Amputation, I amputated paragraphs of text beginning with the first paragraph of each chapter and echoed the cuts of those lines through the remaining pages of the chapter. The ablated lines were cut at a specific location, cutting the body of the text away between the baseline and the x-height, leaving the typographic ascenders and descenders behind as a present code of traces marking the text’s absence. I then displaced these textual fragments by weaving them back into the voids of each chapter’s first paragraph creating a new construct of illegible text.
LAURA HAAK
015
Series of spreads throughout ‘Hannibal’ by Thomas Harris, exploring absence through removal and displacement of text. Used Novel, 7 x 10 in. OVERLEAF
[04]
[03] Book Dissection of ‘Hannibal’ by Thomas Harris, exploring absence through removal and displacement of text. Used Novel, 7 x 10 in.
As a philosophical precedent, I studied Jacques Derrida who explored the philosophical relationship of absence and presence to language through speech and writing. He argues that the original absence in language is the referent to which language signifies. Written text is a codification of absence –referencing the presence of reality which language is not. According to Derrida, reality is constituted by what he calls “differance”– a term he coined that linguistically plays on the French terms for “differing” and “deferring”. This term suggest that in order for something to be what it is it must be different from everything else. This difference is registered through traces of those differing things, marking their presence even in their absence. Derrida’s philosophy suggests that there is no absolute presence. If writing represents –in a secondary way– some present time object or event, then the absence represented by writing is just an absent present represented by the author.
LAURA HAAK
019
As a research precedent in the field of sculpture I explored the work of Rachel Whiteread. Her sculptures index past presences of objects through casting their negative forms. Her work ranges in scale from hot water bottles –Clear Torso (1993)-, to shelves –Library (1999)-, to entire buildings –House (1993). Her work speaks of time and memory through a process of symbiotic addition and removal of material. In her Holocaust Monument in Vienna (19952000), she casts an interior of a constructed library room –an un-occupiable concrete room in an outdoor plaza. The archival capacity of her casts evokes intellections of memory, history, and social change. Her casts solidify negative spaces throughout the world, leaving behind a dense presence in the place of a past void. They also clearly mark their dislocation from their molds through the traces of contact and removal on their exterior conditions.
[05] Cast of Dog. Pompeii. Need photo credit from A Day In Pompeii [06] Holocaust Memorial by Rachel Whiteread. Vienna, Austria. 2000.
Her casts are reminiscent of the historical conformations of Pompeii –a city buried alive in 79 AD. Pompeii had to be destroyed to preserve the city –frozen in time through centuries– much like Whiteread’s destruction of objects to reveal a negative embodiment of the space within. “Death, like a sculpture, has molded his victims”.1 Similarly, Rachel Whiteread has destroyed all her original forms –shelves, books, mattresses, staircases, and buildings– in order to mark their absence through a solid cast. These sacrifices talk about the interaction between creation and destruction as well as the inevitable link between presence and absence. This study expanded my exploration into creation through removal from dissecting, carving, and cutting into the field of casted objects. 1
Chateaubriand as cited in Mullins, Charlotte, “An Untimely Death: A Context for Rachel Whiteread,” 2004.
021
As my exploration into casting and carving– the two methods for creating physical absence –continued, I became interested in a more ephemeral form of absence: the absence of sound. In order to explore silence through modeling, I chose to focus on the geometric form of the anechoic wedge– used in anechoic chambers –or “rooms without echo”. This formal investigation allowed me to investigate the dissection and construction of a sound absorbing field with the potential to inscribe echoes into a surface and to form silence into a surface. The geometry of the anechoic wedge allowed me to both create formal studies of sound fields in model form, as well as to create experimental sectional study drawings through these fields. Through these sound-scape studies I attempted to create and understand a language through which I could begin to explicate absence in a physical site at a variety of scales.
It was after I got to Boston that I went into the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Anybody who knows me knows this story. I am constantly telling it. Anyways, in that silent room, I heard two sounds, one high and one low. Afterward I asked the engineer in charge why, if the room was so silent I had heard two sounds. He said “Describe them.” I did. He said “The high one was your nervous system in operation. The low one was your blood in circulation.” - John Cage
[07] Detail of Half-Scale model of anechoic geometry. Basswood and Cast Resin. 24 x 30 x 12 in. [08] Half-Scale model of anechoic geometry. Basswood and Cast Resin. 24 x 30 x 12 in.
[10] Series of study models exploring dissecting cuts through anechoic geometry. Basswood, 4.5 x 4.5 in. each
[09] Study models exploring dissecting cuts through anechoic geometry. Basswood, 11 x 11 in. each
023
LAURA HAAK
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
024 [11] Iterative drawing series using removal and shadow as a means of mapping sections of silence. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 11 x 11 in. each.
025
LAURA HAAK
[13] OVERLEAF Detail of Half-Scale model of anechoic geometry. Basswood and Cast Resin. 24 x 30 x 12 in.
[12] Detail of Half-Scale model of anechoic geometry. Basswood and Cast Resin. 24 x 30 x 12 in.
026 THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
030 [14] Splitting 23, 1975. Three gelatin silver prints, cut and collaged, 21 x 31 in. Collection of Frederieke Sanders Taylor. [15] Splitting, 1974. Six gelatin silver prints, Two photographs 12 1/2 x 8 1/4 in. each; Four photographs 16 x 20 in. each.
Matta-Clark’s voided spaces create the sensation of absence as well as a sense of promise, possibility, and expectation. MattaClark moved from these projects to his series of sanctioned amputations and dissections of architectural sites set for demolition. One of his most famous works, Splitting: Four Corners (1974), shows a suburban house in New Jersey cut completely in half, allowing the rear half to tilt backwards through the removal of certain elements of the foundation. After the completion of the split, Matta-Clark amputated the four corners and preserved them from the house’s demolition. These displaced corners were later exhibited in galleries in their entirety; down to the attic dust packed into the corners. This effort to keep the pieces authentically intact demonstrates the archaeological value Matta-Clark placed in the eradicated pieces. Along with the exhibition of these architectural fragments, he documented his processes through photography and video. His use of montage and collage in photography was particularly relevant to his architectural projects where he physically cut apart the images of his work and collaged them back together to allow for privileged views of the space that would not otherwise be possible; much like his physical
Matta-Clark’s work is relevant to my thesis through the way he conceived creation through removal and alteration as well as the presence of absence that his “objects” project. He dealt with ready-mades as material to operate upon and created art through visceral and spatial techniques –the manipulation of natural lighting– throughout his procedure of cutting. He questioned and manipulated the roles of construction and destruction in the creation of art. His work dealt with the mutual necessity of presence and absence within architecture and is, in a sense, “the presence of an absence that is the absence of presence”. 3
2
Sussman, Elisabeth (2007). “The Mind is Vast and Ever Present.” Gordon Matta-Clark:You Are the Measure. Yale University Press:12-13.
3
Kaight, Brian (2006). “The Belmon Tunnel and Toluca Yard”. Almanac of Architecture and Design 2006: 12-14.
LAURA HAAK
“A response to cosmetic design; A completion though removal; A completion through collapse; A completion through emptiness”.2
cuts into architecture, these photo collages revealed exclusive views into the hidden structures of buildings. He also dealt with urban conditions and critiques the concept of gentrification. In his piece Conical Intersect (1975) –his contribution to the Paris Biennale– he carved a series of circular cuts through two 17th century civic buildings set for demolition amidst the massive urban renewal located in close proximity to the much contested Centre Pompidou. His cuts pierced through both buildings like a tornado funnel frozen in one position. This cut pierced from the street facade, through the interior, and exited through the roof, allowing pedestrians a view of the buildings’ internal skeleton.
031
As a precedent straddling the fields of sculpture and architecture, I researched the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, focusing on his building operations and assaults on existing structures. His early cuts began as urban guerilla acts with projects like the Bronx Floor Project (1972-1973), and Infraform (1973). He described this process as:
During World War II, Detroit’s industry flourished when it temporarily stopping production of
032
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
Detroit, Michigan, once a thriving industrial capitol, is now a city of vacancy and urban decay. With a population of 6,318 in an area of 1.4sq. miles in downtown Detroit, the city offers extremely different conditions for a testing ground of absence. Starting as a small French settlement, Detroit’s demographics, population, culture, and landscape have all transformed through its relationship to industry. Due to the development of the automobile industry in Detroit, the population grew from 265,000 to 1.5 million between 1900 and 1903, climaxing after the foundation of the Ford Motor Company in 1903. The density and industrial requirements transformed the city’s landscape from a Parisian landscape of tree-lined boulevards to a blue-collar industrial landscape of factories, silos, and skyscrapers.
[16] Highland Park, Michigan. 2009 [17] Tiger’s Stadium Baseball Stadium, Detroit, Michigan. 2009
commercial automobiles to manufacture tanks and military aircraft. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the city fell into urban strife and the population began shifting to the suburbs after the completion of the Interstate Highway system. Violent race rioting also attributed to the phenomenon of White flight from the city’s downtown area. The population peaked in 1950 at 1.85 million and has since been more than halved with an estimated current population of 713,777. This has left the city in a state of extreme vacancy and urban decay despite recent attempts at an urban renaissance. Empty skyscrapers and discarded landmarks lay dormant throughout the city’s urban field. This site offers the chance to study absence in an urban condition of extreme population sparsity amongst an urban fabric saturated with residual historic structures that memorialize a flourishing past.
4
The Detroit City Planning Commission, “Survey and Recommendations Regarding Vacant Land in the City,” 24
LAURA HAAK
The previous excerpt is a select passage from the notorious document titled “The Survey and Recommendations Regarding Vacant Land in the City” compiled in August of 1990 by the Detroit City Planning Commission which was quickly buried due to its shocking nature. The survey was an extensive mapping of the entire city of Detroit identifying all vacant parcels and abandoned structures. Upon completion, the map shockingly exposed the city’s vast expanses of unoccupied and abandoned property for the first time in an official document and proposed an official program of “urban non-renewal”.
August 1990. 033
CPC Staff Analysis: While over 70% of the parcels in the area are vacant, over 20% of the existing buildings are also vacant. CPC staff counted over 1300 parcels in the area and identified ownership of approximately 1100 parcels, of which over 430 or approximately 40% were city-owned. Areas to the north and west are primarily residential with industrial to the east and south. Appropriate action would include expansion of the industrial area to include land east of Oakland. The remaining area would be best suited for residential redevelopment. A combination of residential redevelopment efforts would be best suited for this area. Low density multifamily development such as town houses would be appropriate where a large amount of vacant parcels are contiguous. In more stable areas, where vacant lots are scattered, the City should aggressively market City-owned parcels to adjacent property owners.4
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
034
Commercial Land-Use Map - Metro Detroit
Industrial Land-Use Map - Metro Detroit
Green Space Land-Use Map - Metro Detroit
Institutional Land-Use Map - Metro Detroit
Commercial Land-Use Map - Downtown Detroit
Industrial Land-Use Map - Downtown Detroit
Green Space Land-Use Map - Downtown Detroit
Institutional Land-Use Map - Downtown Detroit
Vacant Building Land-Use Map - Metro Detroit
Residential Land-Use Map - Downtown Detroit
Vacant Building Land-Use Map - Downtown Detroit
LAURA HAAK
035
Residential Land-Use Map - Metro Detroit
This series of land-use maps were an attempt to understand the intended usage of the city through the filtration of the city into layers with programs acting as the filters; a few patterns instantly emerged. The city’s industrial property created a network along the major roadways around the periphery of the city center. The residential property is pushed past the city’s downtown and begins to intensify in density the further from the city center it reaches. Green space is extremely sparse throughout the city and the vacant property spreads throughout the downtown and the urban context which creates an alarmingly profound covering of vacant property throughout the entire city. This initial analysis of the city’s current usage allowed for the investigation of the city at a finer scale, focusing on smaller sites within the city that demonstrated extreme instances of urban absence.
[18] Michigan Theater, Detroit, Michigan. 2009.
036 THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
[19] Michigan Theater, Detroit, Michigan. 2009.
038 THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
040
The previous photographs are of the Michigan Theater in downtown Detroit. Designed by the architectural firm of Rapp & Rapp, the theater was built in 1926 in the French-Revival style. The seven-story theater, attached to a thirteenstory office building (currently known as the Michigan Building), was extremely detailed and ornate and seated 4,038 patrons. Due to unprofitability and underuse, it closed in 1967 and was planned for demolition. After a few brief revivals as a porn theater, a concert venue, and a supper club, it closed again in 1976 and was again set for demolition in order to use the site for parking. Due to the adjoining tower’s structural dependence upon the theater, the shell of the theater was kept, utilizing the main entry for vehicle access, the grand staircase converted into a curved parking ramp, and a three-level steel and concrete parking structure was inserted in the auditorium providing 160 indoor parking spaces. The interior was violently
[20] The Metropolitan Building, Detroit, Michigan. 2009
excavated to create enough space for the parking structure, leaving behind the ornate dome ceiling, sectioned balcony seating, the ticket booth, the four-story ornate vaulted lobby, and the theaters original red curtain. The two photographs below are of the Metropolitan Building in downtown Detroit. The fourteen-story gothic office tower was constructed in 1924 by the design of the architectural firm of Weston & Ellington for the Central Realty Company. It was home to a variety of watchmakers and fine jewelry businesses. With its unique triangular footprint and ornate exterior gothic ornament, it has sat vacant in Detroit’s downtown center since 1979 when ownership was titled to the city and has been deemed unsafe for occupants.
041
These are only a few examples of the vast ruins populating the city’s contemporary downtown. Upon visiting these post-urban ruins and navigating the city, I came to the realization that the most striking thing about being in contemporary Detroit is not the visual abandonment of enormous structures throughout the city or the bizarre current uses of some of the urban ruins, but the overwhelming silence of a vastly uninhabited urban ground. In Detroit, one navigates the streets and sidewalks like most other cities and encounters the
same urban fabric, but one is not confronted by the urban activity and urban noise of other cities for large expanses within the city. This phenomenon struck me as particularly relevant to the city’s current state which I viewed as stuck somewhere between the audible urban chaos and the silence of rural tranquility.
LAURA HAAK
The two photographs below are of the National Theater. Detroit’s National Theater is the last remaining survivor of the city’s original theater district. It was design by the architect Albert Kahn in 1912. It stands downtown, just up Monroe Street from Cadillac Square, surrounded by parking facilities and vacant businesses. It was closed in the 1970’s and remains vacant.
[21] The National Theater, Detroit, Michigan. 2009
[22] Roosevelt Park, Detroit, Michigan. 2009.
042 THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
Michigan Central Depot section collage-cast with junk yard crushed automobiles Collage, 22 x 11 in. OVERLEAF
[24]
[23] Michigan Central Depot, Detroit, Michigan. 2009.
LAURA HAAK
045
After exploring a variety of Detroit’s vacant historical buildings, I chose to focus on the Roosevelt Park section of the city. Central to this abandoned park is the Michigan Central Depot. Built in 1913 for the Michigan Central Railroad, it replaced the previous passenger rail depot which burned down. The station is in the Corktown area of Detroit near the partially demolished Tiger’s Stadium and the Ambassador Bridge which connects southwest Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The station was part of a larger project that was responsible for building the Michigan Railway Tunnel below the Detroit River connecting Detroit to Ontario, Canada (completed in 1910). The station was designed in a neoclassical Beaux-Arts style by the architectural firms Warren & Wetmore and Reed and Stem --the architects who also designed New York’s Grand Central Terminaland was the tallest rail station in the world upon its completion and became a Nationally Registered Historic Site in 1975. The building consists of two distinct parts: the station and the 18-story tower. The tower held offices for the Michigan Central Railroad and was never completely occupied. The upper floor’s offices were never completed and were vacant since the building’s opening. The vacant tower appears to be a hollow shell from a distance and is visible throughout the city. Since the building is isolated from Detroit’s downtown it was underused from the beginning and closed in 1988. Currently the victim of extensive vandalism, the vacant station has been proposed for recent re-development with programs including a trade processing center, a convention center and casino, as well as the headquarters for the Detroit Police Department.
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
048 [25] Detroit figure-ground map, 1951. Digital Print, 44 x 22 in.
LAURA HAAK
049 [26] Detroit figure-ground map, 2009. Digital Print, 44 x 22 in.
[27] Layered mapping of Detroit, MI using removal and shadow as a means of mapping the city. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 11 x 44 in.
050 THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
052 [28] Diagram of Detroit, Michigan’s building density and infrastructural links in 1950. [29] Diagram of Detroit, Michigan’s building density and infrastructural links in 2009.
LAURA HAAK
053 [30] Diagram of Detroit, Michigan’s proposed urban removals. [31] Diagram of Detroit, Michigan’s proposed infrastructural removals. [32] OVERLEAF Layered mapping of Detroit, MI. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 11 x 44 in.
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
056 [33] Detroit figure-ground map of area surrounding Michigan Central Depot, 1951. Digital Print, 22 x 22 in. [34] Detroit figure-ground map of area surrounding Michigan Central Depot, 2009. Digital Print, 22 x 22 in.
LAURA HAAK
057 [35] Mapping of Detroit, MI using removal and shadow as a means of understanding the city. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 22 x 22 in. [36] Mapping of Detroit, MI exploring the removal of vacant structures and unused infrastructure within the city. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 22 x 22 in.
058 THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
059
LAURA HAAK
[38] Mapping of Detroit, MI exploring the removal of vacant structures and unused infrastructure within the city. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 22 x 22 in.
[37] Mapping of Detroit, MI using removal and shadow as a means of understanding the city. Layered Laser-Cut Bristol, 22 x 22 in.
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
[40]
OVERLEAF
Detail of model of the Michigan Central Depot area of Detroit, MI in 1950 exploring silence and urban removals in the landscape. Basswood and Cast Resin, 22 x 22 in.
[39] Detail of model of the Michigan Central Depot area of Detroit, MI in 1950 exploring silence and urban removals in the landscape. Basswood and Cast Resin, 22 x 22 in.
060
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE: SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI
064 [41] Model of the Michigan Central Depot area of Detroit, MI in 1950 exploring silence in the landscape. Basswood and Cast Resin, 22 x 22 in. [42] Model of the Michigan Central Depot area of Detroit, MI in 2009 exploring silence in the landscape. Basswood and Cast Resin, 22 x 22 in.
LAURA HAAK
065 [43] Process images during construction of model of the Michigan Central Depot area of Detroit, MI in 1950 exploring silence in the landscape. Basswood and Cast Resin, 22 x 22 in.
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
The beginning of the 1980’s brought with it one of the most drastic changes in modern society. The socioeconomic output of our society has been de-structuring itself from a mainly productionbased society towards the manipulation of information. In this relatively recent field known as “Information Age”, information technology concerns the use of computer-based systems to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and retrieve information.
I intend to create the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group as a social prototype of an active archive. Not just a library-museum as an institution, but rather as a tool/knowledge incubator that dissects, cuts, transmits, and retrieves physical and metaphysical information. I intend to investigate if this present by-product --part of a long history of accumulation of cultural practices- can become a more deliberate strategy/tool operating outside of the problematic of its military-industrial complex legitimacy. According to Scott Lash, author of Information Flows and Involuntary Memory, “information space” is where the most significant social dimension resides– that which does not stand still and, elusively, becomes a collective memory. Yet, for many there is a naïve notion
that information should –at all costs- be easy to understand. “The important thing”, artist Ilya Kabakov writes, “is that when we read, we are probably doing it so that we don’t have to look anymore,” referring to the current humanist perspective of the archive as a hermetically sealed repository. The archive becomes a single-dimensional object, a solid collection of facts that does not have any flexibility or potential for further development. Aimed to control, both of the recorded items and of the people such records are directed to, these archives become a final product, “a depository of cultural material slowly sedimented through time,” as Manuel de Landa, author of The Archive Before and After Foucault, describes it. Yet, I believe the logic of any material-memory system ought to be more fragmented –treated as a nexus through which information moves– according to the efforts and energies of the people interacting with it. Can architecture, as an active archive, be part of the clues that trigger awareness upon the receiver? If so, how does it operate as a tool that translates information from its original living source into a format that affects our memories of the information itself?
[01] Perceptual trace of information storage and flow, 22x 36 in. wood & plaster.
068
Roger Reichard
In my thesis project, I will create an architecture that functions as a flexible archive. In its site, forms, program, and materials, it will involve people in the co-creation of systems of information and it will initiate opportunities for people to draw out information that is useful to them. In these terms, I am not solely proposing an archive system that houses an institutional program, but an architecture that serves as a tool: a mechanism of translation between people and information. I will explore these issues in terms of constructing national identity among migrant populations. In this respect, what can we say about the place of the archive in the construction of migrant identity? Of a nation?
[02] The 309th AMARC facility plan , 36 x 52 in. digital print.
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
070
In “The Library of Babel”, Jorge Luis Borges describes the universe as a “library, whose random volumes constantly threatens to transmogrify into others, so that they affirm all things, deny all things, and confound and confuse all things, like some mad and hallucinating deity.” In my opinion, this implies the archives as a living organism, where knowledge --a knowledge that is three-dimensional- always belongs to the living present and where verifiability and authorship acts upon the “re-discovery” of the random volumes. How can architecture be the living archive of collective memory instead of an institution whose special role is the guardianship of the document?
0’
100’ 200’
500’
1000’
N
2760
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
072
My intent is to develop the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, or AMARC, as a cognitive archive-museum within strong psychological images of “the city of dead and the censored.” Furthermore, can the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group as an interactive archive be the means for social aspiration for the many poor migrants that sustain it, as well as for the nation itself? Can AMARC perform not as a junk yard, but as a “collection of random volumes” as its moral authority becomes the medium through which these people exercise their agency and which level of personal aspiration is most appropriate to them? I am going to investigate if AMARC’s significance --as an institution based on pragmatically dissected and revealed artifacts- can serve as an intuitive intermediate that allows us to salvage, reclaim, and gather information of the given site condition as an archetype of the present construct along new programmatic values. Can this present by-product, part of a long history of accumulation of cultural practices, be a more deliberate strategytool operating outside of the problematic of authoritative legitimacy?
ROGER REICHARD
073 [03] Taxonomy -“collection of random volumes”, 11 x 11 in. ink on mylar. [04] Taxonomy -“collection of random volumes”, 11 x 11 in. ink on mylar . [05]
OVERLEAF
Plan View- Projected Housing Infrastructure, 11 x 33 in. layered digital print
Established in 1946, AMARC does not only hold the inventory of past aircraft, but also the infamous side of a system that still dominates the sociopolitical structure of the USA. AMARC is the pragmatic evidence of the entire military-industrial complex system slowly accumulated through time --a reality that some sources would like to hide from public opinion; however, AMARC as a site of concealment should not be viewed as an independent entity. What is the makeup of the souls that ran such a secretive junkyard/ archive? What is it for them in the present? According to Homeland Security, Arizona has more than 500,000 illegal immigrants in addition to the high density of its legal immigrant population. Many of these immigrants live in Tucson, AZ, where AMARC is the biggest employer. For Tucson, AMARC is not just a junk yard: it is Tucson. Most families work or have worked in there and it is a dominant part of the city’s collective memory.
[06] Taxonomy- , “relationship of interfaces” 11x 17 in. ink on mylar & xerox.
074
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group --also known as “the Boneyard”- is the final repository field for the US aerospace development programs. According to the US Department, AMARC was originally meant to store excess Department of Defense and Coast Guard aircraft, but has in recent years been designated the sole repository of out-of-service aircraft from all branches of the U.S. government.
[08] B-52’s boneyards, 36 x 52 in. ink on mylar & xerox.
[07] “city of the death”-series of traps -spatial navigation, 24 x 54 in. wood & plaster.
077
ROGER REICHARD
President of the United States and former General of the Army, Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:
Taxonomy- , “relationship of interfaces” 11x 17 in. ink on mylar & OVERLEAF
[10]
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together. ” [09] Pedestrian Labyrinth- “spatial traps”, 24 x 54 in. wood & plaster.
078
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
relationships among information and the environment. I will investigate the relationship between the internalities -- psychology for arm industries- and the externalities of collective memories of the visitor create a vital source of ongoing cultural enrichment and renewal. I propose to design a set of “cartographic memory (memory lanes)” within the aesthetic precedence of Cold War machinery, where digital information is encountered within the always present framework of military agents, as a reminder of human destructive nature. These lanes will serve as a series of traps --spatial navigation systems- where the inhabitants need to fully immerse themselves to gain knowledge. Thomas Vanderbilt’s Cerebral Cities challenges how we find ourselves searching for new ways to define our place in the world. Can AMARC not as a junk yard, but as a “collection of random volumes” as its moral authority be the medium
082
I propose to create the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group as a social prototype of operative archive. Not just a library-museum as an institution, but as a tool that dissects, cuts, transmits, and retrieves information of the given site condition as an archetype. Can this present by-product, part of a long history of accumulation of cultural practices, be a more deliberate strategytool operating outside of the problematic of authoritative legitimacy? Programmatically, this interactive archive should be an ongoing work of the imagination --one where its content is not a by-product of remembrance, but an instrument for the development and cultivation of a passion oftentimes denied to the financially and culturally oppressed. I am interested in how a social prototype of active archive that behaves like a living organism within the confinements of a colossal military establishment will help reinterpret spatial
[11] Longitudinal Section-“memory lane”, 17x 54 in. digital print on transparency.
“Poor migrants will always remain captive to the wishes of the vanguard, to the prison of their own domestic tyrannies and to the self-fulfilling prophecies of those business-class Marxists who always know, in advance, how best poor people should exercise their agency and which level of risk is most appropriate to them.”
ROGER REICHARD
I intend to show that within these “cartographic memory lanes” physical and metaphysical Information is scattered, not consolidated into one single information bank station within a single machinery. I believe this puzzlement about its irregularity and satisfaction of its playfulness will have less of an impact than it might on more formal inquiries, thus allowing for a reflective perspective of the external world within AMARC and beyond. This implies that the self is no longer just a passive viewer, but part of the transition: a place where I can start questioning how metaphors from the mapping of physical space apply to the mapping of virtual space-mind. Will this notion of mapping trigger how we find ourselves searching for new ways to define our place in the world?
According to Arjun Appadurai, author of Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, many social locations throughout the world, especially those characterized by media saturation and migrant populations, use “moving images met by mobile audiences” which disturbs the stability of many senderreceiver models of mass communication. The work of imagination --especially for poorer migrants- is critical for exercising the capacity to aspire. Without developing this capacity, Appadurai adds:
083
through which people exercise their agency and which level of personal aspiration is most appropriate to them?
1:72
[12] “The guts of the war machine”, 36 x 60 in. wood, paperboard & plaster.
“I create new images all the time by taking many little parts of images I have in the video library in my imagination and piecing them together. I have video memories of every item I’ve ever worked with – steel gates, fences, latches, concrete walls, and so forth. To create new designs, I retrieve bits and pieces from my memory and combine them into a new whole.” (p.21, Grandin, 1996). [Editor’s note: I’m not sure which type of notation will be used for the final layout of the book, so I left in this citation. Please remove if necessary) According to neuroscience and law professor at Harvard University Oliver R. Goodenough, “by starting from wholes and moving down into parts, one is moving in the opposite direction
“…initiate from existing phenomena and asks for an explanation of them in terms of interactions among simpler components, and then for an explanation of those in terms of interactions among still simpler components, and so on.” And yet it diverges from what he describes as “naive reductionism” in that this neurological process is “a well-defined and unique set of properties and rules the discovery of which would progressively make the mysterious and not yet understood predictable.” “In that moment of perception, the instant within which the human seizes the object to incorporate it in his realm of knowledge, he transforms it to a means of communication, a symbol. At this point the object becomes its own message, it becomes culture, it becomes writing. To be precise, the object is transformed into a series of symbols that marks it. These symbols offer the possibility to represent the entire world of phenomena. The writing, and with it an autonomous world of compendiums and concepts is brought to life, freed from the world of objects.” -Alba D’Urbino
ROGER REICHARD
Perhaps, then, it is apparent to me that it is unfeasible to design this spatial navigation of “knowledge incubator” for the oppressed selves and to talk about creative knowledge gain without first reflecting on the complex systems of how the brain interacts and shapes its own reality and that reality’s relation to the archive. In her 1996 semi-autobiography, Thinking in Pictures, Temple Grandin explains her cognitive process for designing the machines involved in livestock management. Grandin is a woman with high-functioning autism who received her PhD in animal science and now works to design humane methods for handling and slaughtering livestock. She has a faultless photographic memory which she exploits extensively while coming up with new designs, as she explains in the following:
from which things arise.” (Goodenough and Deacon, 2006, p 854). [Ed. Note: see above] It seems that by deconstructing the process of perception using consciousness makes it possible not only to go beyond immediate informed presumptions about the nature of things we say, but more importantly, to create things we would not otherwise perceive to be creative. In From Complexity to Emergence and Beyond: Towards Empirical NonFoundationalism as a Guide for Inquiry, Paul Grobstein describes that there are complex systems that perspective, as he states:
085
Can the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, as an interactive archive, be the means for social aspiration for the many poor migrants that sustain it, as well as for the nation itself?
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
086 [13] Longitudinal Section-“B52-boneyards”, 4x 11 in. ink on mylar.
Longitudinal Section-“memory lane”, 17x 70 in. digital print on transparency. OVERLEAF
[15]
[14] “The guts of the war machine”, 36 x 60 in. wood, paperboard & plaster.
As previously stated, I plan to investigate --with a forensic approach- if AMARC’s value as an institution based on pragmatically dissected and revealed artifacts of the US military complex and can serve as an intuitive intermediate that allows us to retrieve, reposes, and gain information of the site condition as an archetype. This is about identifying where the threshold begins and seeing the guts of the war machine.
ROGER REICHARD
089
The important next step from the complex systems perspective to what seems to be a bottom-up approach towards an “unpredictable” creative emergence has to do with recognizing that simple things networking in simple ways generate complex outcomes. As Albert Einstein once said, “physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.” In the case of my generation, there are reasons to believe that we have witnessed a fundamental change in the way that information is accessed, how it is communicated between the general public and research professionals that is undoubtedly one of the most important paradigm shifts in recent history. My biggest struggle is, and will be, to acknowledge, understand, and develop proper levels of organization where the input and output of information banks within the cartographic memory lanes create -- both physically and metaphorically- an incubator of different phenomena occurring at quite different scales within the perceptive consciousness and for the variability of the archive itself.
[16] “The guts of the war machine”, 36 x 60 in. wood, paperboard & plaster.
ROGER REICHARD
095
I believe that through acknowledging, treating, and safeguarding this present by-product --part of a long history of accumulation of cultural practices- not as an “object” in decay, but rather as a “series of symbols” that are already imbedded within its owns psychological realm. AMARC can be a more deliberate strategytool operating outside of the problematic of its own current state of oblivion, as a repository of dying military artifacts within the collective memory. More importantly, how does this “city of death” talk to us as we –engaging in the spectacle or critiquing it- participate in its own funeral? This notion of self-reflection on the “dead and censored” will not only open its own politics, but also suggest that it plays an inevitable role in how we characterize what we are inquiring into. This investigation will create subjects of analysis that would not have otherwise come into existence and further cementing a sense of being within the people digesting and transmogrifying it.
I propose that we look at the archive less as a repository of granted banks of past recollections and more as a platform of an ongoing development: an archive that lives in the present. How can the archive be recognized as a tool that fosters a dialogue between the information-database architecture and the receiver? How can it be a place that cultivates the proliferation of socio-culturally promoted worlds and selves? According to Henri Lefevbre, social space is the site “where we gather to watch each other come into contact with the technological devices used to engage with virtual space.” This
engagement relies upon real-time databanks of digital images, text, and sounds that make it possible to trespass into geographical and cultural boundaries. I am interested in how the traditional techniques of digital infrastructure start addressing a world where information is too conclusive and one-dimensional into one where the phenomenological aspect of the human operant is more involved. As stated by the world-renowned Italian curator Alba D’Urbino, I strongly believe “the body is the bridge connecting different machines, a sender of impulses where the interaction with the surrounding world is cut down to the primitive handling of a joystick, pressing a single key on the keyboard or stimulating sensors. The world is being programmed at a very different place.” I propose an archive of automated database banks within the a forensically dissected site to act as an interface pushed to the limits of the creative
096
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
“The production of space is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live).” -Henri Lefevbre, The Production of Space.
[17] Plan-“memory lane”, 17x 54 in. digital print on transparency. [18]
OVERLEAF
Plan View- “Guillotined lane-projected spatial expansion”, 24 x 36 in. Xerox over xerox.
[19]
OVERLEAF
Plan View-“ Suppressed Spatial Expansion”, 24 x 36 in. digital print on transparency.
ROGER REICHARD
Since the inputs are provided to the fully communal and collaborative archive there is no single ownership or point of view. The External World Wide Web links validate reliability for edited guide only to act as the viewpoint of the reference. There is a DNA Software Platform, consisting of several layers of sub-command layers that interact with each other, not only visually, but on all the senses. What if playing with the thought that our entire body, unlike the typical fingermouse relationship, becomes a practitioner of all the activities involves in the relationship of exchanges in this virtual journey? Can faces, hands, eyes, ears, mouth, hair, feet,
or the body as a whole also be a participant in the relationship between reality, image, text, and simulation? More importantly, how can the traditional technique of “seeing� the information evolve into one where other sense faculties are involved? Can blind people be participants of this knowledge? If so, how can these visitors, not as primitive users of one dimensional interfaces-joysticks and mouse, but rather as a body submerged in the data landscape gain a better understanding of the ontological world?
097
working process having only the opportunity to give simple inputs within the chain-reaction of systems and to receive only outputs that the cognitive self will re-value within the perpetual work in progress.
Networking information storage and flow, 22x 36 in. wood & plaster. OVERLEAF
[21]
[20] Trace of information databases, 22x 36 in. wood & plaster.
ROGER REICHARD
101
I think it is essential, that in order to achieve these aspects of physical-metaphysicalphysiological experiences, that there should be a series of retrieval-delivery relationships that foster the phonemic structure of the experiences. Can a virtual journey within the spiraling fuselages of C5’s and B52’s be the means for the visitor to experience a virtual world that is no longer autonomous of him/ herself? How will information be retrieve once it is accessed from the top of a dissected fuselage differ from the one accessed at the always changing ground level in which desert sand erases time as other factors act upon it? The interplay of different phenomena occurring at quite different scales within different stratus of the war machine’s carrion trigger interplay of all the inner cognitive identities and start questioning the traditional references after discriminating and blending the experienced temporality develops a personal gain of knowledge. I will also source Leger, Picabia, Duchamp, and Geoge Legrady’s bodies of work in order to start interrogating it as a possible archival agency where the conditions of delivery of the exhibition transmogrify the control of the author’s work into a memory archive that only exists through the interactions of promoted selves. Digital media works are by nature information based, yet when digitalbased artwork enters real institutional spaces, such as libraries or museums, a number of issues come to the foreground. Does the work shift functions from being an artwork to being a tool that generates three-dimensionally point of view references? If so, considering AMARC not as site of concealment, but as an intersecting public space with the virtual “far away”, what is the experiential difference between the receivers on both sides of the interactive spectrum?
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
The goal is not to answer the problem of the site’s fall into ruin since the events with a repurposing effort, but to develop the story of the symbolic relics through defining the site as one to be written into the future; to protect it from the notion that architecture must produce economically or serve socially/politically. It is an isolation of the site from the urban economic and infrastructural systems. Disconnected, the site can grow in a narrative space rather than an urban space. The ground plane created for the events became a datum mediating the past and the future as time capsules were buried below the surface. These were evidence of the present for retrieval in the future. Above the surface, however, symbols and images of the future were projected in the form of sculptures and structures. These are possible futures from
the past. The symbols of the future that populate the site form a constellation of ideas and desires intended --at the time- to refer to the things achieved and hoped for by our post-industrial society. Each point in this constellation, therefore, is an idea. Each line is a bridge connecting ideas. Each point in section is a register of time. By translating the ideas referred to symbolically into functioning programs, the site can actualize the intentions and desires of the events. The sculptures and structures refer to ideas about the freedom and expression of modern man, but functions/programs can be inserted to allow for these ideas to become present in the site-- between Freedom of the Human Spirit, a figurative bronze sculpture, and Rocket Thrower, a figurative bronze sculpture, an observatory for one to exercise their desire to explore for themselves. Between the Freedom of the Human Spirit and Form --an abstract stainless steel sculpture- open studios for artists. The towers for observation become towers for projection. Performance is communicated between towers by shadow projections. The inversion of the towers’ function --from receiving a view of the city to projecting performancereinforces the site’s purpose.
[01] Plan of observation-turned-projection towers. Marker on Black Vinyl.
Flushing Meadows Corona Park was a dumping ground for the ashes of New York City’s industry. The hills of ash were leveled and creeks that flowed through the area were dammed & filled. A flat ground plane was created as the home of 1939 World’s Fair and used again for the 1964 World’s Fair. These events were presented as celebrations of the achievements of modern man. In actuality, they were financial ventures intending to deliver profits to a struggling city’s economy.
[02] Overleaf Axial mapping of site’s symbolic points. Marker on Black Vinyl.
104
Mike Ritchie
108
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
Robert Moses carved Flushing Meadows Corona Park out of an undeveloped part of Queens, NY known as the Corona Ash Dumps --a remote location relative to the rest of New York City. Ironically, the highways that were built to transport visitors to the World’s Fair site now cut the site off from its surroundings. As a result, it has been neglected following the event of 1964 despite numerous attempts to develop a plan to resurrect the large parkland. The remnants that occupy points in the park represented an image of the future. As time has passed, they have transformed into representations of the past and have fallen into disuse or drastic repurposing. The deteriorating New York City Building was a pavilion, a temporary home to the United Nations, a museum, and an ice skating rink. The observation towers that look out onto New York City are closed to the public by gates and are slowly crumbling away. The Philip Johnson-designed pavilion adjacent to the towers is suffering a similar fate; tts terrazzo map of the United States was an attraction at the 1964 fair and now is a modern day archeological object. This site is isolated from the city that created it in its own image. The architecture of social or economic commodities does not apply here as it does in most places where the postindustrial culture celebrated by the events is prevalent. Created as a place to temporarily celebrate a time in our culture, the site’s future was not planned. The site --meant to be an image of the future- was given no vision of the future itself. This project is an attempt to reinsert the present as a moment of time (albeit a fleeting one) into a site which is stagnating in temporal atmosphere of past futures.
MICHAEL RITCHIE
109 [03] Flushing Meadows Corona Park Site Plan. 20 x 20 in. Digital Print. [04] Site history as ash dumping grounds. 20 x 20 in. Digital Print.
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
110 [05] Site memory map highlighting remnant symbols. 20 x 20 in. Digital Print. [06] Site geometric mapping. 20 x 20 in. Digital Print.
[07] Place, City, State. Year
112 TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
[08] Place, City, State. Year
114 TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
The present is reinserted into FMCP by way of performance, or more specifically, by the evidence of performance in the present. The experience of performance through reflection and shadow fosters the recognition of the present as these indices of performance exist only in the present moment. They are in flux --retained by memory, but not archaeological recordings. The markings only exist at the instant of the performance and then disappear.
[10] Reflection study model detail. 12 x 24 in. Wood and Black Vinyl.
[09] Reflection study model. 12 x 24 in. Wood and Black Vinyl.
The reflection creates a symmetrical experience of performance between performer and viewer: both play each role simultaneously.
MICHAEL RITCHIE
The social structure of the performance is broken down. There is no passive observation empty of any creation of one’s own. The act of seeing is necessarily, the act of performing/ creating.
117
The World’s Fairs were scenes of the spectacle. Images of the future attracted thousands of viewers from around the globe. Now the viewer is the spectacle himself.
119
The shadow is a projection from one source to another. The performance is projected to a viewer, which may be the performer himself. The experience of this performance-data encourages the awareness of the present at work. This awareness is heightened, if not permitted, by the sharp contrast to the site’s context which recalls imagined futures designed in the past. Shadows are markings of time. They are registers of presence in a specific time. Light cuts through the performer, projecting the performance in the present.
[11] Shadow study model. 12 x 24 in. Wood and Black Vinyl [12] Shadow study model detail. 12 x 24 in. Wood and Black Vinyl
121
With the ash hills flattened and the creeks filled in, the tabula rasa park was inscribed with a Beaux Art plan. At points on the plan, connected by long walkways, sculptures and structures were placed. The sculptures were intended to symbolize two things: the technological achievements of modern man and the concept of modern man’s freedom of will that allowed for those achievements. The structures erected are proof of technological progress (Trylon and Perisphere of 1939, Unisphere and Towers of 1964), and images of the future as envisioned at the time.
age embodied in the sculptures has passed. The future imagined by the structures was never exactly realized --as visions of the future are only dreams. This project is an attempt to reapply the present as a moment in time to the symbols of this site by actualizing the concepts they represent. The adjacency of functions that embody the creativity of modern man to the forgotten symbols will bring those symbols back to the present.
Buried below the surface of the ground plane were time capsules filled with representation of the post-industrial society of modern man. The events now long past and the site forgotten, along with its symbols; these remains have lost their original meanings. The
[13] Reflected Site Plan detail. Marker and Pencil on Wood and MDF plaster casts. [14] Reflected Site Plan and Model. Marker and Pencil on Wood and MDF plaster casts above. Steel, Plaster, and Wood below.
Axes are created between points in the site constellation and each axis has hidden significance determined by the points being bridged.
[16] Observatory axis. Steel, Plaster, and Wood.
Straddling the axis formed by a connection between the Freedom of the Human Spirit to The Rocket Thrower is an observatory emerging out the ground plane which diagrammatically defines the boundary between future (above it) and past (below it). The freedom of a visitor to explore our boundaries through the lens is the intersection of the two symbols: the first representing something internal and the second representing something external. It is the intersection of internal and external boundaries. [17] Overleaf From FoHS to Form Model. Steel, Plaster, and Wood.
[15] Observatory from FoHS to Rocket Thrower. Steel, Plaster, and Wood.
123
The 43 ft. tall bronze figurative sculpture entitled The Rocket Thrower by Donald De Lue was designed to invoke the theme of man conquering space.
MICHAEL RITCHIE
The bronze figurative sculpture entitled Freedom of the Human Spirit by Marshall Fredericks was described by the creator himself: “I tried to design the work so that it was as free of the earth, as free in space as possible…the thought that we can free ourselves from earth, from the material forces which try to restrain and hamper us, is a happy, encouraging and inspiring one, and I sincerely hope that my work will convey this message.”
[19] Overleaf Section through towers. Present cutting through past. Marker on Black Vinyl.
[18] Existing Observation Towers Section. Marker on Black Vinyl.
Present is exposed and the concepts referred to by the symbols occupying points on axis with the towers (in view of the towers) are fulfilled through the inversion of the towers’ original purpose.
127
This function of observation (image of the city to the viewer) will be inverted to become projection (performance out of the performer). Shadow, reflection, and echo are projected by visitors/performers between tower platforms, cutting the past future with the present, and the passive function of observation with the active (creative) function of projection.
MICHAEL RITCHIE
The three observation towers of varying heights represented an image of the future reflective of culture found in the city they look out upon. Unlike the park’s symbols of creativity, the towers served the purpose of looking out --a passive activity. Rather than encourage the action of man’s creativity (the theme of the Fairs), the towers almost work against it by promoting the celebration of what has already been done.
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
130
[20] Section through towers. Marker on Black Vinyl. [21] Section through towers. Marker on Black Vinyl. [22] Overleaf Observation Towers. Steel, Plaster, and Wood.
131
MICHAEL RITCHIE
135
The New York City Building, the only structure remaining from the 1939 fair as the NYC Pavilion and is currently home to the Queens Museum of Art. This structure, having served so many unrelated purposes, has been neglected and is deteriorating because it has no true purpose of its own. The stainless steel sculpture entitled Form by Jose de Rivera is a piece which, through rotation by motor, is constantly in the present. The turning of the curving metal line reconfigures before the viewer, changing over time fluidly. Rivera himself worked in the present as opposed to the past (recreation/ reproduction) or the future (focus on final product): “Art for me is a creative process of individual production without immediate goal or finality�.
The art collection program contained within the museum will be extracted out toward Freedom of the Human Spirit and transform functionally from collection to creation. As one passes the axis of Form, he turns from the Freedom of the Human Spirit, projected toward Form and out of the ground (from collection of the past toward creation in the present). Space is pulled from the voided NYC Building toward Freedom of the Human Spirit (will to create) and unfolded toward Form (creation in the present).
[23] Intersection of will and creation. Steel, Plaster, and Wood. [24] Model of passage from museum toward FoHS, projected to Form. Steel, Plaster, and Wood.
[25] Model of passage from museum toward FoHS, projected to Form detail. Steel, Plaster, and
136 TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
[26] Intersection detail. Steel, Plaster, and
138 TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
[28] Overleaf Site Model detail at location of the Unisphere. Steel, Plaster, and Wood.
[27] Model of passage from museum toward FoHS, projected to Form. Steel, Plaster, and Wood.
140 TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS
We learn their language and, in turn, improvise ours. Without knowing their technology, we would not be able to develop the modern complexity of today. These sacred fragments are important to maintain and preserve.
This thesis proposes an architecture that mediates the tension between historic preservation and modern day construction methods where the site becomes the intervention for a new city complex. Babil Province, or Babylonia (an ancient site located 60 kilometers from present day Baghdad), is the chosen site. Its intact fortification and leftover walls are pulled and shifted to symbolize the changes of form through space and time. The shift becomes a metaphor of mankind’s ongoing journey in which each move we make, we learn from its original blueprint.
However, as our demand for new structures is constantly increasing, we sometimes have no choice but to engulf these sacred sites and build over or around them. Our need for land forces us to demolish and clear out these sites. Centuries of history get lost as these abandoned areas become nothing more than discarded memories annexed into museums. These fragments are then relocated all around the world for study and research or put on display in a public context. They become scattered and distanced from their original sites and understanding them and unlocking their secrets becomes more difficult the further they are removed from their historical context. From these tectonic shifts, a neutral zone emerges and the interstitial space in these moments opens up a new city complex that integrates program combining the past and the present.
144
Ancient ruins and artifacts are time capsules that, once opened, can release vast amounts of information from past cultures. They become the viewport that allows access to ancient times. Through the fragments of architecture that they
have left behind we can see pieces of memories that they have been engraved into the stones that still remain; their architecture tells the story of their civilization. We can take these stories and unravel their secrets. We then borrow these ideas and transpose them into our present time.
[01] The New Babylon, 1/96”= 1’-0” scale. Detail of final site model with intervention. 36 x64 x10 in. Wood and bristol.
Babil Province, Iraq Jeanne Chiang
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS
146 0’ 384’ 768’ 1536’ 3072’
N 0’
384’
768’
1536’
3072’
N 0’
288’
576’
1152’
2304’
N
[02] Ancient Babylon sitemap drawing indicating the past blueprint in relation to what’s left today. Digital Print.
The ruins at Ancient Babylon suffer this dilemma not just physically, but also socioeconomically. I chose Babylon as the site because of its complex layers of history that lead to the birth of modern day Baghdad, Iraq. Baghdad, as we know it today, is a highly conflicted enclave between its own people and the world.
147
Overtime, we forget the importance of these ancient cities as we build our new citie; we demolish almost absentmindedly. Not realizing the power that lies behind these crumbled sites, new cities emerge without knowing the strength of its own culture and historic origins; I call these “cities without identities”. All that remains of these sites are regions with no occupancy or cultural importance. The site is left bare and abandoned. It becomes erased on maps --tangible white spaces in a figure-ground; scattered spaces shadowed by modern structures all hatched in deep black. These leftover sites should raise the issue of historic preservation to greater prominence. How much can we construct when we are conscious of destroying valuable pieces of history?
JEANNE CHIANG
The site is located in the historic ruins of Baghdad, Iraq, in what is known to be Ancient Babylon. A place heavily loaded with history --both in religion and politics- it has been a point of conflict with its present day form. Today, Ancient Babylon is a converted military base for the U.S. Army. As these ruins are being looted and bombed, history is lost through careless actions.
From this unified society began a fragmentation that caused tension within the civilization. According to biblical scriptures, the creation of the Tower of Babel created a diaspora of people that lead to warfare and tension all over the world, so the Lord scattered them abroad and they left to build the city.
JEANNE CHIANG
“ And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech,” - Genesis 11:1-9
149
[03] The Extracted Void, 1/96” = 1’-0” scale. The architectural intervention. Plan configuration with possible new program circulation utilizing the blueprint of ancient Babylon. Charcoal and prisma pencil on black bristol board.
The site that I’ve chosen is the Babylonian ruins in Babil Province, Iraq. Its massive fortified walls and fragmented buildings became elements of intervention for a new city complex to emerge from. Like most ancient civilizations, Babylon has a complex and layered system of writing: a language that we were able to decipher and learn from. However, what piqued my interest is located in the Genesis story within the Bible, the story of the birth of nations: the Tower of Babel.
150
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. -Genesis 11: 8-9 (KJV) Babylon was a unified society during its time: one language and a point of origin for mankind which was scattered throughout the world. It was a city in which its first emperor centralized its neighboring lands and war divided nations, The Akkadians, as early as 23 BC. It was an empire rich in written language and preserved knowledge.
The language of the ancient society was able to teach us and contribute some part of knowledge into our modern day technology where something old and forgotten can be revived and reinterpreted to coalesce into today’s modern ways. A single wall that still stands can provide us with more information than we think; it can speak of its time. From it we can learn how it was built, perhaps who built it, and the materials used in its construction. We can then learn about the society’s technology and compare it to today’s advancements. I am attempting to harness the potential within the site. Babylon is still intact and highly preserved despite all the physical abuse it has suffered during armed military conflicts and from its desert environment.
[05] Figure Ground analysis of contemporary Babylon, Digital Print.
151
JEANNE CHIANG
[04] The Extracted Void, 1/96” = 1’-0” scale. The architectural intervention. Plan configuration with possible new program circulation utilizing the blueprint of ancient Babylon. Charcoal and prisma pencil on black bristol board.
[06] Figure ground analysis of site and its extended grid. Digital Print.
[08] OVERLEAF Historic Babylon, 1/96”=1’-0” scale. Sectional analysis.
[07] Shifting site study model. 6 x 12 in. Painted museum board.
155
JEANNE CHIANG
0
50 0m
100 m
[09] Dynamic Interface collage, 18 x 18 in. Digital print and collage cutout.
158 UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS
[11] Figure Ground field compositions. Digital prints.
[10] Dynamic Interface collage, 18 x 18 in. Digital print and collage cutout.
161
JEANNE CHIANG
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS
A fortification is comprised of many walls. A construct derived out of the interaction of different architectural elements: floor, door, wall, window, ceiling, etc. We can take these architectural elements as a single module and re configure them to interact with different elements, thus creating program variations in architecture. An ancient wall, for example, can interact with a modern room. It is within this journey where ancient and modern links into one experience. This is my objective in relocating the United Nations Complex to Babylon.
162
The idea that all the different nations in the world used to be one centralized nation --as told in the story of the Tower of Babel- gave me the idea for this new the United Nations Complex. As of now, the U.N. Tower is located in New York City where it declares world leadership coming from the United States and not the entire world. Doesn’t this indicate a divided world? Babylon is a territory that is both neutral and infant and I feel that relocating the program will create a new breath of power that would benefit the entire world. The new United Nations is where we can all experience our past origin point and constantly learn from it; a haven for all people of the world gain knowledge and celebrate its different cultures within one city. This new center will bring back the original location of all nations to celebrate the oath of power and leadership for all nations to be united and protected.
[12] Reconfiguring Babylon, 1/196” = 1’-0” scale. Being able to distort and divide up the site into grids with continuous lines allows for a numerous amount of generated spatial layouts. Digital collage. [13] OVERLEAF Preliminary Site Model of Babylon. Activation of Shift Conguration, 1/192”=1’-0” scale. Wood and painted museum board.
[16] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE : SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI Laura Haak
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
010
068
Roger Reichard
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
Mike Ritchie
104
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, BABIL PROVINCE
Jeanne Chiang
WEAVING & UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE Areum Han
INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
Lev Belman
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
Irene Chin
PRESSING OF SPACE
144
168
200
216
254
Steven Pitera
U.S./ MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES Jacqueline Palavacino
280
BORDERS
298
Maya Bartur
field -noun
1. 2.
A broad, level, open expanse of land. A portion of land or a geological formation containing a specified natural resource. 3. A wide unbroken expanse. 4. A topic, subject, or area of academic interest or specialization. 5. An area or setting of practical activity or application outside an office, school, factory, or laboratory.
FIELDS
WEAVING AND UNWEAVING
This thesis is an exploration into the creation of space using the technique of weaving and unweaving for generating extraordinary spatial conditions on the chosen site based on my research into Seoul’s urban development, street systems, existing program, and market districts which grew with the city’s settlement and capital growth.
What if a historical city develops and builds a newly invented infrastructure without considering its own history and the trace of time? The capital city of South Korea, Seoul, has more than six hundred years of history. Historical relics are found within the city and throughout radically developed areas undergoing restoration. This project began with an investigation of awakening the trace of time within the city. How can we recreate a cultural space into which the historical remembrance is woven in presence? Weaving is the textile art in which two distinct sets of threads are interlaced with each other to form a fabric. Fabric and architecture
protect our body and contain space, structure (having various methods to be constructed), and allow for self-expression. I developed the idea of woven threads and the texture as space and program --which is part of people’s remembrance- in architecture. I believe the relationship between space and experience is essential in architecture – especially, when linking historical recollections from an ancient time to visual experience found in a present site conditions. The act of recollection is never “complete” in the sense that all information is within the “present”. Rather, information is filtered at the time of the original event and re-filtered at the time of recollection. A sense of “pastness” is achieved through either a feeling of knowing or the experience of remembering. Architecture affects our everyday life, events, and the remembrance of that life. This project proposes how architecture is related to weaving the texture of remembrance and uses the art form of weaving as tectonic methodology.
[01] Mode implying the idea of weaving context by using lamination, 1’-0”=1/32”. Basswood, 12 x 24 in.
168
The Texture of Rememberance Areum Han
Function of the Wall
Function of the Wall Restrains & defines the capital where the king stayed _Egde Condit
[02] Site context line drawing overlapped on satellite photograph, direction of lines implying history of each block; Horizontal lines developed after 1920, vertical lines developed before 1910. Digital Print, 22 X 22 in.
territory where the king stayed _Egde Condition
unction Functionofofthe theWall Wall
Function Functionofofthe theWall Wall Historic Symbol Restrains Restrains&&defines definesthe thecapital capitalterritory territory where wherethe theking kingstayed stayed_Egde _EgdeCondition Condition Initial area of the expansion of Historic HistoricSymbol Symbol
Historic Symbol
territory territory
where wherethe theking kingstayed stayed_Egde _EgdeCondition Condition
Initial area of the expansion of capical
Historic HistoricSymbol Symbol Great East Gate Area capical Initial Initialarea areaofofthe theexpansion expansionofofcapical
Great East Gate Area capical Initial Initialarea areaofofthe theexpansion expansionofofcapical
Great reat East EastGate GateArea Area
Great GreatEast EastGate GateArea Area
Expansion of Seoul
Expansion xpansion ofofSeoul Seoul
[04] Map of the configuration of old Seoul superimposed over a simplified air map of present-day Seoul. Digital Print.
0 0
0 0
.4 .4
.2 .2
.8 .8
.4 .4
2 2
1 1
.8
2
0
.2
.4
1
4km 4km
2km 2km
NN
imposed t-day Seoul
Function of the Wall
territory
where the king stayed _Egde Condition
Function of theSymbol Wall Historic
territory
[03] Map of the relationship between waterway and street system. Digital Print.
where the king stayed _Egde Condition Initial area of the expansion of capical
Function of the Wall Restrains & defines the capital territory where the king stayed _Egde Condition Function of theSymbol Wall Historic Restrains & defines the capital territory where the king stayed _Egde Condition Initial area of the expansion of capical
Historic Symbol Great East Gate Area Initial area of the expansion of capical
Historic Symbol Great East Gate Area Initial area of the expansion of capical
Great East Gate Area
Great East Gate Area
town area.
Expansion of Seoul
Expansion of Seoul
s
1914 1936 1944 1949 1963
.4
.8
2
4km
00
.2.4
.4.8
12
4km 2km
N
1914 1936 1944 1949 1963
Small North-West Gate
0
0
Great North Gate (Bukdaemun)
.2
.4
1
2km
N
4km
AREUM HAN
1914 1914 1936 1936 1944 1944 1949 1949 1963 1963
.4
2km
171
1914 1936 1944 1949 1963
0
Destroyed Section Existing Wall Structure Existing Wall Structure Circulation of the King towards Southern Korea
Location of Main Streets and Main Palace 1395
Circulation of the King towards Hwaseoung fortress
Location of Main Streets and Main Palace 1418
172
WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
Destroyed Section
Destroyed Section
Existing Wall Structure Circulation of the King towards Northern Korea
Location of Main Streets and Main Palace 1766
AREUM HAN
173
The site of this project is the city walls created in Seoul, Korea. The wall was constructed in 1392 at the beginning of the Joseon Dynasty when the capital was moved to the present location in Seoul. In 1395, the boundary of Seoul was measured based on 4 major mountains and the construction of the 4 Great Gates and 4 Small Gates mobilized 120,000 workers. The construction was completed in 1398. The Joseon Dynasty ended in 1910 with the disappearance of the king. The structures were destroyed during the colonial period --the Japanese occupation in 1915- and suffered further destruction during the Korean War in 1950. Even though the wall structure has been destroyed and certain edges of the wall have been blurred, the boundary of the wall implies the initial area of the expansion of capital city today; the area contained within the walls is now a central business district in Seoul’s downtown area. The inner area was directly related to the king’s throne and the main facilities in historical times: markets and industrial entities. The maps show the different circulations the king used in different situations in 17-18 centuries and the diagrams on the right explain changes to the primary street circulation systems in relation. I attempted to read the street system of ‘Old Seoul’ as threads for a woven urban fabric to see the relationship of the city to a woven structure, as well as to see the relationship of the urban program of a market and a historical theme park. These programs remain relevant to the contemporary city of Seoul despite being developed in the city over six hundred years ago; these programs are the threads that connect the past and present in Seoul.
We all retain memories of places and they identify and inform who we are as individuals. I believe the memories of places identify people as individuals and tie them to specific networks of culture and society: they reach into the past and into the future to those whose lives we can only imagine. This thesis will seek to recreate transcendent experiences, to imagine other people and places, to breathe new life into something ancient, and deepen our awareness of place making. It will also explore the relationship between our experiences of memorable places and the expressive act of recreating them through design. Susanne Langer’s books Philosophy in a New Key and Feeling and Form, have profoundly shaped my research. First, the idea of memorable mental images of a place are symbolic of the lives we live, so woven in place. Secondly, the conviction that these symbols are utilitarian --parts of our rational thinking processes- tying past experiences to the present and to a potential future. These ideas have proven essential as I framed the results of my research on memorable place experiences and their impact on the process of design.
AREUM HAN
“…For the important thing for the remembering author is not what he experienced, but the weaving of his memory, the Penelope work of recollection… our purposive remembering each day unravels the web and the ornaments of forgetting… For an experienced event is finite, …a remembered event is infinite…”
175
[05] Weaving drawing for the site, Pagoda Park in Seoul overlapped lines of façade directional projections and hypothetical street connections of existing within the site. Digital Print, 22 X 22 in.
In Illuminations, Walter Benjamin states:
[06] Sketch model study for the spatial conditions from investigated urban fabric threads. Bristol and Foam Board, 6 x 10 in.
176 WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
Main Textile Weaves
178
WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
plain weave
twill weave _ 2/2
twill weave _ 3/1
Weaving Strategies
The most basic and common weave style. The warp and weft are aligned so that they form a simple crisscross pattern. Each weft thread crosses the warp threads by going over one, then under the next, and so on. The next weft thread goes under the warp threads that its neighbor went over, and vice versa. weave
A type of fabric woven with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs. It is made by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads and then under two or more warp threads and so on, with a “step� or offset between rows to create the characteristic diagonal pattern. The fewer interlacings in twills allow the yarns to move more freely, and thus they are softer and more pliable, and drape better. (Twills also recover better from wrinkles than plain-weave fabrics.) When there are fewer interlacings, yarns can be packed closer together to produce high-count fabrics. In twills and higher counts, the fabric is more durable and air- and water-resistant.
Weaving Strategies Weaving Strategies This is a plain weave with an orthagonal grid like structure. It is made up of horizontal, (Weft) and vertical, (Warp) members. The weave is a study of graduated and increasing pressures,
geometric folding and castostrophic reorganization of space. a study of how the pattern can easily change when the rules of the weave are no longer one to one. Notice the vertical members,
(Warp) change the increasing spacing from left to right. This is an image of just the vertical member of this particular weave pattern. If this was being generated, in the physical world there would be one member of the weave that would be initially constructed and left taut. This is called the Warp. This is an image of the horizontal member of this particular weave pattern. This member is installed after the Warp is set up. It is intricately weaved within the spacing of the Warp. This is called the Weft.
[07] Main textile weave diagrams in plan and section, plain weave, twill weave 2-2, and twill weave 3-1. Digital Print. [08] Weaving composition diagram of combination of plain and twill weaving. Digital Print. [09] Warp threads; The isolation of the vertical member of weave pattern. Digital Print. [10] Weft threads; The isolation of the horizontal member of weave pattern. Digital Print.
The drawings (figure 10 - figure 12) are a plain weave diagrams with an orthogonal grid structure. It is made up of horizontal (Weft) and vertical (Warp) members. The weave is a study of gradual and increasing pressures, geometric folding, and the reorganization of space. This study depicts how the pattern can easily change when the rules of the weave are no longer one to one. Notice the vertical members (Warp) change the increasing spacing from left to right. The drawings (figure 13) show that various methodologies of curvature weave composition.
[11] Weaving typology study. Digital Print.
179
A twill weave creates a type of fabric woven with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs (figure 08 - figure 09). It is made by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads and then fewer than two or more warp threads and so on with a “step� --or offset- between rows to create the characteristics of a diagonal pattern. Fewer interlacing in twills allows the threads to move freely and they are softer and more pliable to create a draping effect.
AREUM HAN
A plain weave is the most basic and common weave style (figure 07). The warp and weft are aligned so that they form a simple crisscross pattern. Each weft thread crosses the warp threads by going over one, then under the next and so on. The next weft thread goes under the warp threads that its neighbor went over and vice versa.
WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
180
[12] Model top view, 1’-0”=1/32”. Foam board, 11 X 20 in. [13] Model top view, exploded, 1’-0”=1/32”. Foam board, 11 x 20 in.
181
AREUM HAN
In terms of the formation of the street system, the differences between the orthogonal and radial organization was derived from the different purpose of the street construction in the Old Seoul. The main streets inside the wall were initially designed to connect the palace to the North and East Gates and were redeveloped to connect to the outer area in a radial manner as Seoul expanded after the Joseon Dynasty ended in 1910 and the wall lost the agency of protecting and defining the capital city.
[14] Detail of model studying diverse spacial experiences through level changes, 1’-0”=1/32”. Foam board, 11 x 20 in.
WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
182
With these studies, I started to research methods in which the historical remembrance from the past to the present and into the future could be woven together in Seoul. If the city is an organic system reflecting the lives within it, it is no surprise that we can still find traces of the city’s six hundred years of history. From my site analysis of the formation of the street system, I found connections between the Great Gates along the Seoul City Wall –as well as the main palaces- which changed and affected main streets and other facilities. These were initially used by the commanders, including the king, and expanded to wider range of social positions through time. Even though some sections of the wall structure had been destroyed, its boundary and edge still hold a significant meaning.
WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
[15] Plan of lower level, gradient indicates level differences. Digital print, 22 x 22 in.
184
Seoul has become disconnected from its own tradition and historical context; after the Korean War, it was radically redeveloped by the government. One important part of the Korean independence movement is Tapgol Park. Located in the center of Old Seoul, it is the site of origin for the March 1st Movement of 1919 and the first location for the reading of the Korea’s Declaration of Independence. This park was previously the site of a 15th century Buddhist temple and a stone pagoda. A few relics of the temple still exist in the park. Even though this site has a historical importance, the park is not considered an attraction within the city. This project proposes a past-present cultural context woven space within historical site, not only unifying the older and younger generations, but creating the continuity of Korean culture from the discontinuity.
[16] Plan of upper level. Digital print, 22 x 22 in.
186 WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
[17] Site model implying the site context fabric, 1’-0”=1/64”. Foam board, 15 x 24 in.
188 WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
[18] Site model of site insertion, implying the site context fabric, 1’-0”=1/64”. Foam board, 15 x 24 in.
190 WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
[21] Site model insertion II, representing the context fabric within the site, 1’-0”=1/64”. Foam board, 8 X 9 in.
[20] Site model insertion I, using the same methodology of context, 1’-0”=1/64”. Foam board, 5 X 9 in.
[19] Detail view of site model, implying the site context fabric, 1’-0”=1/64”. Foam board, 15 x 24 in.
193
AREUM HAN
WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
194 [22] Sequence render I, upper level, view from the entrance. Digital Print. [23] Sequence render II, lower level. Digital Print. [24] Exploded system diagram. Digital Print.
[26] Longitudinal Section I & II. Digital Print.
[25] Sequence render III & IV. Digital Print.
197
[27] Sectional perspective rendering. Digital Print.
198 WEAVING AND UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE
INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
200
Lev Belman
The notion of inserted transparency is the threshold between what is “out there” and the being himself. My goal is to make the observer become more creative through the use of overlapping forms, structures, and materials which then influence the mind into a process creative thinking. I am creating a dynamic composition of Architectural rhythm by manipulating the parameters which are established vertically and horizontally with no repetition within linear space.
Advances in fabrication methods allow us to create our own method for creating, as well as rejecting previous Architectural styles. My interest lies in the knowledge we have of the industrial factory, whether it is producing steel or milling wheat. Housing is a basic human need for survival. My interest is in conjoining these two programs into a transmutation between the living temporal spaces and elements of an Industrial factory. Red Hook, Brooklyn: a site of disconnected piers and transformed industrial buildings. My proposal is an inhabitable pier for working and living artists. Studio space is highlighted through a material/structure lens and those areas will supplement artistic creations. The program will re-link the factory with a building/ dwelling for artists.
[01] The Pier. 12 x 36 x 10 in. Plexiglass, basswood, and museum board
“The idea of looking out, or though a lens, establishes the connection between what is known (the object), with the knower, and the observer himself.” The Geometry of Meaning Arthur M. Young
“The knower’s status is at least as important as that of the known, a point which modern physics has been forced to recognize in the uncertainty principle, which reveal the fact that, in order to know something about it, an observer must act upon, and thus disturb, an object. The act of knowing is thus a transaction between the object and the knower which involves physical exchange of energy.”
The state of something being revealed in time is based on what is assumed and viewed as “out there.” Objects become subjective to me and my inner desire. The act of being transparent is being true with the object that captures our attention.
The Pier elevation. 12 x 36 x 10 in. Plexiglass, basswood, and museum board. OVERLEAF
[03]
[02] The Pier detail. 12 x 36 x 10 in. Plexiglass, basswood, and museum board.
202
INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
The Geometry of Meaning: Arthur M. Young
[04] Construct study models. 6 x 4 x 8 in. Chipboard.
206 INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
[05] New Factory Construct Collage. 18 x 10 in. Paper on museum board.
208 INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
[07] New Kit of Parts. Digital Print.
[06] The Pier/ plan, 1/4”=1’ scale. Ink on vellum.
211
LEV BELMAN
[08] The Pier Cross Section. Digital Print.
212 INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE : SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI Laura Haak
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
Roger Reichard
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
Mike Ritchie
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, BABIL PROVINCE
Jeanne Chiang
WEAVING & UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE Areum Han
INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
Lev Belman
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
Irene Chin
PRESSING OF SPACE
Steven Pitera
U.S./ MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES Jacqueline Palavacino
BORDERS Maya Bartur
010
068
104
144
168
200
216
254
280
298
ho 路 ri 路 zon -noun
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
The line or circle that forms the apparent boundary between earth and sky. The small circle of the celestial sphere whose plane is tangent to the earth at the position of a given observer. The limit or range of perception, knowledge, or the like. A thin, distinctive stratum useful for stratigraphic correlation. Any of the series of distinctive layers found in a vertical cross section of any welldeveloped soil.
HORIZONS
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
This thesis offers a redefinition of the typology of signifiers in an attempt to establish cognitive, physical, and social positions that help us understand where we are stationed geographically, historically, and culturally within the present.
With navigation and the perception of horizon as points of departure, the project questions how architecture can intervene with present interfaces and to negotiate the tenuous relationship between the contemporary nomad and his sense of place. Lighthouses, at one point in time, were signifiers of edge conditions. By projecting a singular light, they functioned as anchors providing a point of relativity with which to frame one’s position. However, such towers are now an outmoded archetype. The trajectory of the project is aimed across these coextensive frameworks --to identify a symbolic horizon line- which would ground us in the manner of individuals and as societies while we attempt to read these seemingly illegible, layered, and complex maps. Recognizing the inherent transience of our zeitgeist, there exist a fundamental need
and desire for relativity --even momentary anchors such that we may direct our coursesin both a metaphysical and corporeal sense. In reverting to a monolithic, acupunctural approach, the project searches for possible frames of reference. Architecture is to be that filter through which these overwhelming fields become navigable: an instrument of orientation and the catalyst for finding our sense of place. Casuality of relationships eases the fluidity of movement and vice versa. This incessant state of flux furthers the groundless nature of our condition. With regards to site, the contemporary notion of place can no longer be defined with terms of specificity and relativity. Instead, it can only be interpreted within unstable contexts. As we move through dense metropolises, we tend to project ourselves to other places through networks of globalized media and communication as experienced space is undermined and blurred. Imagined space is one of superimposed layers of which the strata seemingly have no boundaries. Physically and psychologically, where is a horizon to be found?
[01] Projections, superimposed edge conditions from each site. 12 x 12 x 6 in. Laser-etched plexiglass and styrene.
216
Irene Chin
218 [02] Mapping, using the Cartesian grid to define edge and space. Digital Print. [03] Mapping, using the Cartesian grid to define the field and negative space. Digital Print. [04] OVERLEAF Map projection overlays, illustrating edge distortions 18 x 18 in. Digital Print.
219
220 TRANSPARENT HORIZON
221
IRENE CHIN
At harbors, edge conditions where the congested metropolis and the tranquility of the water are juxtaposed, there is a distinct
boundary and frontier. However, within the governing framework or tacit structural grids, these edges fluctuate. These sites must be approached as a multiplicity of superimposed places and non-places. Harbors possess a temporality and plasticity that reflects the relationship between nomad and place(s). There is a tension between the concrete and fluid, the permanent and ephemeral. The issue of scale defined the way in which to render possible coastal sites where the thesis was to be tested. At a global scale, the line between land and water is drawn relative to longitudinal and latitudinal grids. The nature of these edge conditions is dependent upon the projection grid --the cartographic conventionused as a frame of reference. Looking closer, the urban fabric comes into focus and the lines of the urban grid meet the line of coast.
222
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
With a dissipated horizon, it is difficult to distinguish between here or there, near or far. The concept of relativity has become irrelevant; there is no relationship to place or to each other. To acknowledge and respond to site seems futile. All spaces are reduced to terminals through which contemporary nomads pass: fluidity overtakes history, geography, and boundaries. To use Marc Auge’s term “non-place�, point A and point B have been undermined and it is the space and time of transition that has taken on the significance of place. Site is no longer a specific monumental and static ground with a loaded presence and past, but rather, has become a constantly shifting, elusive, and conceptual field.
[05] Extended edges, territorial markers for international waters. 11 x 84 in. Layered drawing, ink on mylar. [06] Coast lines in longitudinal zone of seven water front cities. 11 x 84 in. Laser-cut stencil.
This depth that this exercise of drawing through screen-printing offers allows for an exploration into the space created by these abstract lines. This method of representation provided a transition into exploring edges as tectonic zones and layers.
IRENE CHIN
In searching for a mode of representation, the sites needed to be rendered in such a way that the lines had thickness and depth to illustrate the very fluidity of those edge conditions. The method of screen-printing provided a mode of representation and analogue of approach.
The urban fabric is the canvas or site. The architectural intervention is the screen --or interface- through which a spatial experience may be perceived. That sense of place and anchoring point is the image we seek to create. By printing through a silk screen on fabric, rather than digitally on paper, the scale and influence of the grid became more evident. The structure of the screen and fabric was visible and tangible, giving the drawn edge a greater breadth.
223
Cartesian grids structure the drawing of edges and coastlines. The implicit lines projected onto the explicit lines of waterfronts create complex readings of maps. Far from absolute, these lines are blurry and distorted. The details fall in and out of focus depending on the scale in which we are trying to perceive them. Political factors also make these edges ambiguous by demarcating boundaries --invisible lines in order to establish territorial waters and economic zones. Therefore, beyond the ebb and flow of the tides and the erosion of the coast, these edges could not be represented by definitive singular lines.
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
224 [07] Detail of extended edges map, territorial markers for international waters. 11 x 84 in. Layered drawing, ink on mylar. [08] Detail of coast lines map in longitudinal zone of seven water front cities. 11 x 84 in. Laser-cut stencil.
225
IRENE CHIN
[09] Screenprint detail. Ink on cotton-poly.
226 TRANSPARENT HORIZON
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
228 [10] Screenprint detail. Ink on cotton-poly. [11] Screenprint detail. Ink on cotton-poly.
[12] Grid Models, Urban edge conditions. 12 x 12 in. Spray painted bass wood.
The cultural and historical fabric of a site, while intangible, is legible in the city’s framework. The harbor cities’ street grids meet the edge between land and water with a structured logic informed by urban planning: a hierarchy of routes and roads. This logic was informed by political forces, historical events, and myths. Layers of information shape these cities, creating complex fields and tectonic conditions.
[13] Aerial maps 1:1000 12 x 12 in. Digital Prints.
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
230
In order to establish a figurative “horizon” for the project, several harbor cities were chosen --all situated within the same longitudinal zone. These seven sites were chosen to test different edge conditions; each being loaded field with unique pressures, but all connected so that each intervention --like an acupuncture point- would affect the greater field as a whole. By embedding spatial qualities to the explicit and implicit grids, a system of tectonics can be created with which to frame these cities in order to enter these edge conditions. The interventions at these points would then serve as anchors to the elusive, blurred horizon.
Manhattan / New York / United States / The rigidity of the urban grid, implemented by the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811, dissipates in the West Village
Pombaline / Lisbon / Portugal / Rebuilt with an orthogonal street grid after a destructive earthquake in 1755, the district is surrounded by the organic streets of the rest of Lisbon.
La Rambla / Barcelona / Spain / Major artery from Port Vell, ending at a monument for Christopher Columbus, erected at the place he returned to after his first voyage to the Americas
Basilica di San Nicola / Bari / Italy / Facing out towards the Adriatic Sea, the basilica is an important pilgrimage destination. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors.
Via Egnatia / Durres / Albania / Major ancient Roman road linking the empire’s colonies from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.
The Bosphorus / Istanbul / Turkey / Name meaning “light-bearing� the strait is part of the boundary between Europe and Asia. Istanbul is the only bi-continental city of the world.
The Great Wall / Shanhaiguan / China / A structural and symbolic defensive frontier, the Wall protrudes into the Pacific Ocean at this site
[14] Collage extending the Example’s structure, Barcelona. 20 x 20 in. Collage and acrylic paint.
[15] Collage unfolding Lower Manhattan’s waterfront, New York. 20 x 20 in. Collage and acrylic paint.
[16] Collage negotiating the urban street grid and waterfront edge. 20 x 20 in. Collage and acrylic paint.
Lighthouses marked a specific edge condition between water and land. By studying a series of complex sites, each with a unique tectonic condition and a new typology of towers addresses a broader definition of edge. The specificity of these urban interventions addresses the universal concept of horizon which was the initial premise of investigation.
[17] Towers series of 7, insertion within various tectonic conditions. 3 x 3 in. Plaster and
244
The scheme of inserting monolithic interventions within the context of these cities was an approach to presenting potential instances of ground-ness, creating experiences of a heightened and illuminated sense of place, time, and history. These towers function as an interface through which to negotiate while projecting a horizon line to relate to.
[18] Front view, superimposed projections. 12 x 12 in. Laser-etched plexiglass and styrene.
IRENE CHIN
While the programmatic content of lighthouses may be rather empty --save for a set of stairs leading up to the light source- the intent, however, is heavily loaded. The process of searching for and understanding the sites and the approach of intervention is where the weight of this project lies. In proposing an architectural method of anchoring an individual’s sense of place, the questions left in this thesis are left at a personal scale. Where do you see yourself relating to the physical ground you stand on in the world around you and how do you begin to grapple with the very multiplicity of the conception of place in today’s culture? What this project offers is carefully chosen windows, cutting into the urban fabric with specificity in order to frame the tectonic conditions drawn from the cultural fabric of these sites.
247
In an age of hyper-contexts, where the elimination of boundaries and blurring of horizons are fostering a new breed of supermodern nomads, these monuments can stand as quiet signifiers. It seems contradictory that as technology broadens our horizons and pushes to society to an unprecedented limit, our position becomes vague as we lose our focus and bearings; the transparent horizon presents a polemic. Our present transience comes from lacking a sense of belonging to ambivalent spaces. Communication networks aim to connect us all, but in fact further dissociation when people are psychologically present in multiple places, such that the over-stimulus desensitizes and undercuts awareness of personal and social understanding.
[19] Side view. layered moments derived from bass wood models. 12 x 12 in. Laser-etched plexiglass and styrene.
248 TRANSPARENT HORIZON
[21]
OVERLEAF
Interface, variations on depth, positive and negative space. 8 x 8 x 2 in. Plexiglass.
[20] Interface. 8 x 8 x 2 in. Plexiglass.
250 TRANSPARENT HORIZON
PRESSING OF SPACE
The Record: a project that aims to open up and document a connection between the production\tectonic features of vinyl records and our cities as a series of fragmented
The idea of this project is to think about the city as a record of the objects that scratch against surfaces: rock against glass, the foot in wet mud, an oily finger pressed against smooth metal, and the piece of dirt embedded within the grooves of a vinyl record. As a designer, I see these moments as an opportunity to begin a dialogue between the city and its inhabitants by exploring these interactions at an architectural level in an effort to extract lessons in surface tectonics in order to tell a linear narrative about spatial continuity versus breaks. musical moments. Specifically, one moment within NYC: the Long Island Rail Road Rockaway Branch Line and our interactions with its repeated sequences of garages, empty lots, trestles, street openings, and ruins. These moments open up the idea that within this specific tectonic and historic
record fragment there are various architectural lessons one can learn from incorporating a speck of dirt embedding itself within a vinyl record groove. Architecture augments itself to the city fabric, changing our interactions with built form and the sounds that occur within and around those forms. The city and the moments we create clash, resulting in a noise that only architecture can pick up: a visual sound made when different tectonic elements conflict and we witness the event. With this in mind, I decided to examine the Long Island Rail Road by using three specific spaces relating to musical creation: practice space, performance space, and recording space. In an effort to re-record the railway’s historical tectonic context, these spaces are organized in such a way that this tectonic noise can be collected, played, and documented, eventually becoming a new record fragment within an already compressed system with the result being a musical and architectural explosion of sound.
[01] Recording space. 12 x 12 in. Vinyl and wood.
254
L.I.R.R. Rockaway Branch, New York Steven Pitera
“We have split the sound from the maker of the sound�- R. Murray Schafer The Music of the Environment The moment when the needle hits a record is a moment of architectural importance: this constant contact with a surface rich of repetitive information. This surface is visible, but the sounds embedded within are locked away from our touch and can only be released if an external entity is introduced. That entity is the needle: its sole purpose being to flow on the surface of the record while examining all that it touches. The record itself stands for the imprint of information wishing to be extracted. It is the site and the grooves are the areas of an architectural investigation that revolves around the concept of a speck --an alien residue resting within the space between the grooves that results in a change within the system it resides.
[02] A Record, in sequence, being pressed. 11 x 32 in. Digital Print.
256
PRESSING OF SPACE
The record. A record. To record. The shift of the preposition suggests that there is a rhythm to an idea that remains static and understood. The shift identifies Record as a condition of the pressing and exploding of information. It is one general aspect --a historic stamp in time- but even as concrete, the idea of Record is still in motion, its parts playing a tectonic musical that can be felt, as well as seen and heard. This historic tectonic sound is much like the act of recording: it isn’t a piece, but the final product. What parts construct this sound and the act of recording? Experience, observation, and time express their importance within the system. There is the simple layering that interlocks and explodes; it makes up the surface which is to be broken if history is to be recorded.
257
STEVEN PITERA
[04] Various views of speck intervention. 12 x 4 x 4 in. Wood and paint finished with mineral oil and shellac.
[03] Effect of speck intervention. 12 x 4 x 4 in. Wood and paint finished with mineral oil and shellac.
259
STEVEN PITERA
[05] The old LIRR Rockaway Branch Line. New York, 2009.
261
But what if a piece of dirt embeds itself between the grooves of the record? The dirt and specks entrench themselves in the available space given to them. The specks effect is much more than the simple layers of its location. When it lands, it changes its resting place, stopping the flow of music. It does this by allowing the needle to run over it. Instead of the needle being able to play the record, it plays the sound of the speck which becomes a distorted reality of what it is hiding. The speck changes not only the physical nature of the record, but also the part of the system which allows for the function to replay the recorded material. It is destructive but instead of removing it, I learned from it and used its altering properties to my advantage: to use the language of the speck as a formmaking and programmatic-altering entity to help better understand my architectural question: can the site’s layers leave a surface that I can run an architectural needle across? How does this surface affect the needle?
STEVEN PITERA
The record as a tool holds an important piece of information: the ability to hold music as a physical component within its structure. This means the record itself is the music --the grooves on the surface hold information that needs to be extracted in order to be fully understood. When a needle glides over the edge, that is the moment when a sound is played. The needle explores the surface of the record and is guided by the rotation of the player. The motion produces the constant flow that allows for the needle to weightlessly caress the surface of the record. The resulting sound is music.
PRESSING OF SPACE
262 0’
450’ 900’
1800’
3600’
N
[07] Fragmented moments as they occur along the railway. 1:50 scale. 18 x 36 in. Digital Print.
[06] The railway record fragment, 1:50 scale. 18 x 36 in. Digital Print.
263
STEVEN PITERA
264 PRESSING OF SPACE
[08] Spacial study of the landing of the speck and mapping its effect. 12 x 36 in. Digital Print.
265
Vinyl pressing introduces a unique take on the project. It offers a shift of scale from a single pellet to a complex integration of material, heat, compression, and repetition. The vinyl is the site and the specks present the challenges that are considered architectural --an individual expression of form, process, program, and spatial management. What do we relate these two ideas to? The railway helps in cementing a layered structured surface combined with the objects and forms that alter it. How does the railway react to the landing of the specks? The site offers similarities to the groove and speck relationship. First, its long linear form bluntly resembles a groove in a record with the streets flanking either end becoming the dip of the groove. Second, other forms of infrastructure glide their way above and below the grooves of the railway, but unlike the needle, they do not read the hidden information. They avoid the existence of the groove and instead are another part of the record/groove relationship.
STEVEN PITERA
To continue, I need to understand the specifics of how a record is manufactured. This will open up the architectural question and release my investigations and understandings. A simple slab of vinyl is created from pressing a piece of vinyl called a “cake� between molds which house the (negative) master copies of the recording. The cake is comprised of vinyl pellets, collected and cooked to form the circular shape while the molds etched on a lathe are designed to translate sound into physical strips or tears into a metal material. From the combined objects, a single slab of vinyl is created with the recorded work represented by grooves.
PRESSING OF SPACE
266 [09] Section of the grooves, speck, and architectural needle integrated in the practice space, 1/16” = 1’ scale. 12 x 12 in. Digital Print. [10] Plan of the grooves, speck, and architectural needle integrated in the practice space, 1/16” = 1’ scale. 12 x 12 in. Digital Print.
267
STEVEN PITERA
PRESSING OF SPACE
268 [11] City scratch site drawings, 1:200 scale. 12 x 12 in. Digital Print. [12] City scratch site drawings, 1:100 scale. 12 x 12 in. Digital Print.
[14] Close up of railway, 1:50 scale. 12 x 12 in. Digital Print.
[13] Close up of railway, 1:20 scale. 12 x 12 in. Digital Print.
270 PRESSING OF SPACE
[15] Architectural moments embedded within record fragment, 1:50 scale. 18 x 36 in. Vinyl and wood.
STEVEN PITERA
273
For the site, studies were conducted pertaining to the nature of the record grooves and their relationship to the speck. The conclusion was that the speck, although destructive in nature, is important so that it could distort the function of the record playing system. It not only masks the sound, but also stops the needle from accessing the hidden information. I found the speck could be used to alter the function of the railway itself. It does this by careful integration into a system of tracks, platforms, and entry spaces. It embeds itself into the surface of the railway and changes it to the point where the introduction of the architectural needle is not deprived of its function, but instead the speck would alter the surface and redirect the intention of the location of the needle, much like if you were to simply move the needle onto another part of the record and change the information the needle picks up. This information, in terms of architecture, is exposed, manipulated, and finally settled into a state which physical form relate to the greater record.
274 PRESSING OF SPACE
[18]
OVERLEAF
Gaps within the record void scratches, 1/16” = 1’ scale. 12 x 12 in. Vinyl..
[17] Performance Space, 1/16” = 1’ scale. 12 x 12 in. Vinyl and wood.
[16] Practice Space, 1/16” = 1’ scale. 12 x 12 in. Vinyl and wood.
275
STEVEN PITERA
276 PRESSING OF SPACE
277
STEVEN PITERA
THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE : SILENCE IN DETROIT, MI Laura Haak
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
Roger Reichard
TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY
Mike Ritchie
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, BABIL PROVINCE
Jeanne Chiang
WEAVING & UNWEAVING THE TEXTURE OF REMEMBRANCE Areum Han
INSERTING TRANSPARENCY
Lev Belman
TRANSPARENT HORIZON
Irene Chin
PRESSING OF SPACE
Steven Pitera
U.S./ MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES Jacqueline Palavacino
BORDERS Maya Bartur
010
068
104
144
168
200
216
254
280
298
bor路 der -noun
1. A part that forms the outer edge of something. 2. A decorative strip around the edge of something, such as fabric. 3. A strip of ground, as at the edge of a garden or walk, in which ornamental plants or shrubs are planted. 4. The line or frontier area separating political divisions or geographic regions; a boundary.
BORDERS
U.S. / MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES, AZ
My project began as an investigation of one’s culture and the interpretation of the perceived information. During the analysis of the site, the perceptions expressed through drawings, using various methods of imagery filtrations, did not balance the connections of the people within the context which lead to the internal emphasis behind the conceptual interventions.
The dividing line between two nations is manifested not just as a line of control, but as a condition. Though the United States and Mexico are juxtaposed to one another, their attitudes towards each other are not aligned along their 2,000 mile border. The border cities to be deconstructed and analyzed are Nogales, Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Expressing a joint between the two nations, rather than a divide, would be ideal in the resolution of conflicts between the two nations. A space frequently characterized by emptiness and fluidity of movement, where the precise line of the border is often difficult to discern, it seems as if these two worlds coalesce into one as the line of control becomes nearly erased.
A set of theaters is proposed to span across the border of Sonora and Nogales to consciously bridge the two countries. Through a series of tactical exercises, the existing wall is reanalyzed, shifted, and deconstructed. The wall sites itself within this notion of “third space”. It is here that these everyday activities seek their way through ‘holes’ in these panels that make up the wall --some created, others already existing. The wall is inquired, detected, and examined by various actors as an attempt to maintain this joint. The fence’s surface is interrupted by proposed plug-ins that attempt to instigate a dialogue on the new border condition and suggests a possible joining of two landforms that the cultures can begin to benefit and influence each other. This creates local tactics that are imagined as global threats. As the walls grow taller, stronger, and more intense, the nations divide, cities become fragmented, and homes are rearranged: the deconstruction and reconfiguration of the existing border in order to develop a hybrid existence. A new landscape and interlay of spaces is seen to emerge as a result of these new configurations.
[01] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
280
Jacqueline Palavicino
-Manuel Delanda “Nonorganic life�
[02] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
282
US/MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES
In the case of chemical self organization, two distinct forces are at work, the rate at which the substances diffuse and the rate at which they react with each other. When the balance of power is dominated by diffusion, the result is a steady-state equilibrium, but the moment reaction rates begin to dominate, the chemical substances are suddenly confronted with a new problem, and they must respond to the challenge by accepting, a configuration that meets the new energetic requirements.
283
JACQUELINE PALAVICINO
US/MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES
284 [03] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material. [04] OVERLEAF Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
285
JACQUELINE PALAVICINO
JACQUELINE PALAVICINO
289 [05] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
[07]
OVERLEAF
Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
[06] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
290 US/MEXICO BORDER AT NOGALES
PROSCENIUM STAGE PROSCENIUM STAGE
TRAVERSE STAGE
Proscenium space is characterized by a proscenium arch. The proscenium arch i the frame -stage where the audience sits o -this a type of stage is good for cr which separates the stage from the auditorium and form an outline for the stage. Like picture frame, a curtain may be used for scene shifts. Audience sits on one side.
-proscenium space is characterized by a proscenium arch. The proscenium arch is the frame which separates the stage from the auditorium and forms an outline for the stage. PROSCENIUM -like a picture frame STAGE a curtain may be used for scene shifts audience sits on one side. -proscenium space isSTAGE characterized by a proscenium PROSCENIUM arch. The proscenium arch is the frame which separates thespace stageisfrom the auditorium and forms -proscenium characterized by a proscenium PROSCENIUM STAGE an outline the stage. arch. The for proscenium arch is the frame which -like a picture frame a curtain may Apron be used for separates thespace stage auditorium and forms Proscenium Arch -the With -proscenium isfrom characterized by a proscenium scene shifts audience sits on one side. an outline for the stage. arch. The proscenium arch is the frame which -like a picture frame a curtain may used for -an apron is a stage segment ofthe theauditorium stagebe which proseparates the from and forms scene shifts audience sits on one side. trudes through and beyond the Proscenium Arch. an outline for the stage. Traditionally the apron was used bybe actors “break -like a picture frame a curtain may usedto for through” theaudience proscenium directly scene shifts sits and on one side.address the Proscenium Arch - With Apron audience.
TRAVERSE STAGE
-stage where theSTAGE audience sits o TRAVERSE -this type of stage is good for cr
-stage where theSTAGE audience sits o TRAVERSE -this type of stage is good for cr
-stage where the audience sits o ARENA ORfor TH -this type ofSTAGE stage is good cr -audience sits on all four sides
-actors enter down the aisles s PROSCENIUM ARCH WITH APRON -works well with an intimate fe number of set pieces. An apron is a segment of the stage which protrudes through and beyond the Proscenium -an apron is a segment stageApron which proARENA STAGE OR TH Proscenium Archof-the With trudes through and beyondthe the apron Proscenium arch. Traditionally wasArch. used by actors to “break through” the proscenium and Traditionally the apron was used by actors “break -audience sits on all four -an apron is a segment of-the stage which to proARENA STAGE ORsides TH Proscenium Arch With Apron directly address the audience. through” the proscenium and directly address the -actors enter down the aisles s trudes through and beyond the Proscenium Arch. audience. Traditionally the apron was used by actors “break -an apron is a segment of the stage which to proTHRUST through” the STAGE proscenium and directly address the trudes through and beyond the Proscenium Arch. audience. Traditionally apronsides was of used actors to “break -audience is the on three theby acting area. The through” thethe proscenium and address blocking (or movement of directly the actors) playsthe to all audience. three sides. -- the fourth side contains the scenery. -entrances to the acting area are through the scen-
THRUST STAGE ery upstage and through the audience at the two
front corners of the stage. -audience is area on three sidesthe of the acting area. The -downstage expands apron so audience sits THRUST STAGE blocking the movement of the actors) plays to all on three (or sides. three sides. -- three the fourth contains the scenery. -actors may from theside same aisles the audi-audience is enter on sides of the actingof area. The THRUST STAGE -entrances to the acting area are through the scenence blocking (or the movement of the actors) plays to all ery and through audience thescenery. two -thisupstage stage offers both an the intimate styleatand flexible three sides. -- three the fourth contains -audience is on sides side of the acting the area. The front of the stage. stage.corners -entrances the acting area the scenblocking (orto the movement of are the through actors) plays to all -downstage area expandsthe the apron soat audience ery upstage and through audience thescenery. two sits three sides. -the fourth side contains the on three sides. front corners of the stage. -entrances to the acting area are through the scen-actors may area enterexpands from thethe same aisles of the audi-downstage apron soat audience sits ery upstage and through the audience the two ence on three sides. front corners of the stage.intimate style and flexible -this stage both -actors mayoffers enterexpands froman thethe same aisles of the audi-downstage area apron so audience sits stage. ence on three sides.STAGE FLEXIBLE -this stage intimate style of and flexible -actors mayoffers enterboth froman the same aisles the audistage. ence take many forms -can -this audience stage offers an intimate style and flexibleor -the andboth performers can remain separate stage. be intermingled -the configuration of the stage can change during the FLEXIBLE STAGE course of the performance
-works well with an intimate fe
-audience sits on all four sides ARENA number of STAGE set pieces.OR TH
-actors enter down the aisles s -works well with fe -audience sits onan all intimate four sides number of setdown pieces. -actors enter the aisles s
-works well with an intimate fe number of set pieces. BLACK BOX THEATRE
-a theater that is inside a larg -the sets, stage, seats can be desired by the director.
JACQUELINE PALAVICINO
THRUST STAGE BLACK BOX THEATRE Audience is on three sides of the acting area. The blocking (of the movement of the actors) -a theater BOX that is inside a larg THEATRE plays to all three sides. The fourth side contains the scenery. Entrances to the actingBLACK area arestage, seats -the sets, can be desired by that the director. -a theater is inside a larg through the scenery upstage and through the audience at the two front corners of the stage. BLACK BOX THEATRE -the sets, stage, seats can be Downstage area expands the apron so the audience sits on three sides. Actors may-a enter desired by that the director. theater is inside a larg -the sets, stage, seats can be from the same aisles as the audience. This stage offers both an intimate style and flexible desired by the director. AMPHITHEATRE stage.
AMPHITHEATRE
-the configuration of the stage can change during the course of the performance
TRAVERSE STAGE TRAVERSE STAGE
The stage where the audience sits is on two sides. This type of stage is good for creating an intimate atmosphere.
oscenium hich nd forms
-stage where the audience sits on two sides -this type of stage is good for creating an intimate atmosphere.
doscenium for hich oscenium nd forms hich oscenium nd forms d for hich nd forms d for
-stage where the audience sits on two sides -this type of stage is good for an intimate atmosphere. TRAVERSE -stage where theSTAGE audience sitscreating on two sides -this type of stage is good for creating an intimate atmosphere. -stage where the audience sits on two sides -this type of stage is good for creating an intimate atmosphere.
n
d for prom Arch. nto “break ess the n prom Arch. npro“break mto Arch. ess the proto “break mess Arch. the to “break ess the
rea. The plays to all he scenery. the scenhe two rea. The plays to all rea. The dience he scenery. plays tosits all the scenrea. The he scenery. thetwo audihe plays to all the scenhe hescenery. two nd dience sits theflexible scenhe two sits dience the audidience sits the audind flexible the audind flexible
nd flexible
TRAVERSE STAGE TRAVERSE STAGE
ARENA STAGE OR THEATRE IN THE ROUND -audience sits on all four sides of the stage. -actors enter down the aisles same as audience
ARENA STAGE
-works wellSTAGE with an intimate feel, a smaller and a limited ARENA OR THEATRE IN cast, THE ROUND number of STAGE set pieces. ARENA ORon THEATRE IN of THE The audience sits all four sides theROUND stage. Actors enter down the same aisles as the -audience sits on all four sides of the stage. -actors enter down aisles same asstage. audience ARENA STAGE OR THEATRE IN THE ROUND -audience sits on allthe four sides of the -works well with an the intimate smaller cast, and a limited -actors enter down aislesfeel, sameaas audience numberwell of sits set pieces. -audience on all intimate four sides of the stage. cast, and a limited -works with an feel, a smaller -actors the aisles same as audience numberenter of setdown pieces. -works well with an intimate feel, a smaller cast, and a limited number of set pieces.
audience. This theater works well with an intimate feel, a smaller case, and a limited number of set pieces.
BLACK BOX THEATRE -a theater that is inside a large room which is painted black. -the sets, stage, seats can be placed in any configuration desired by BOX the director. BLACK THEATRE
BLACKBOX BOXTHEATRE THEATER BLACK
-a theater that is inside a large room -the sets, stage, can be placed BLACK BOX THEATRE -a theater that is seats inside a large room desired bystage, the director. -the sets, seats can be placed -a theater is inside a large room desired by that the director. -the sets, stage, seats can be placed desired by the director.
which is painted black.
The theater is inside a large room is painted black. The sets, stage, and seating can be in anywhich configuration which is painted black. in any configuration placed in any configuration desired. which is painted black. in any configuration
AMPHITHEATRE
separate or during the
separate or separate or during the separate or during the during the
AMPHITHEATRE AMPHITHEATRE
AMPHITHEATER AMPHITHEATRE
The round of oval theater is partially surrounded by a semi circle of tiered seating for the audience.
291
FLEXIBLE STAGE AMPHITHEATRE The flexible stage can take many forms. The audience and performers can remain separate or be intermingled. The configuration of the stage can chance during the course of AMPHITHEATRE the performance.
-can take many forms FLEXIBLE STAGE -the audience and performers can remain separate or be intermingled -can take many forms FLEXIBLE STAGE -the configuration the stagecan canremain changeseparate during the -the audience and of performers or course of the performance be intermingled -can take many forms -the audience configuration the stagecan canremain changeseparate during the -the and of performers or course of the performance be intermingled
[03] OVERLEAF Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
[02] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
JACQUELINE PALAVICINO
295 [08] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material. [09] Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material. [10] OVERLEAF Title/Description. Dimension x Dimension in. Material.
BORDERS
Within the site context of the national border park between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, issues surrounding the existing federally-funded construction of multiple walls began to assert a hierarchical set of conditions differentiating ‘types’ of illegal immigration. The redundant border fence construction indicates the original border wall not a definitive barrier, but rather a way
This project investigated illegal immigration based on motivations and the land’s own capabilities of preemptively ‘knowing’ a person’s possible path through the land based on the inherent capacity that each part of a person’s path credits once activated. This proposes an epigenetic landscape that takes into account the biology and consciousness of its human activators while actively responding to different intelligence/motivations. to assert a factor of control over the amount of time it takes to cross each additional fence. Attempting to categorize the consequences of the wall, one begins to see the impact of each side’s specific responses. One also sees how those responses act as affirmations of social awareness of the wall’s impact. Each side’s response attributes largely to the site conditions present formation and constructed conditions.
The idea of being able to archive intent based on following a path resulted from the site visitation and consequent discovery of the different accumulations of varying types of debris: a smashed cellphone and plastic bags entangled in a tree are very different from a pair of jeans and a bible. This concept of having an archive inherent to the land was studied through a series of hydraulic terrain models, issuing a grid-like system onto the proposed hydraulics that ran in both the x and y directions, with one x hydraulic and one y hydraulic per tile. Within this model, whenever a tile was pushed down, all the tiles running along those same x and y lines would be raised up to directly indicate the one point that has been affected. Going beyond the 1:1 x/y movement of the first ‘system model’, pathways developed according to different optimized intentions for differently motivated illegal immigrants and were finalized. The path through the terrain of a family moving as quickly as possible on the path of least resistance differs from the pathways potentially ‘activated’ by smugglers hauling narcotics or firearms that might want more coverage, a steeper terrain, or even the ability to change direction if being pursued.
[01] Hydraulic system model of grid. Syringes, latex, plexiglass, and steel, 24 x 24 x 20 in.
298
Maya Bartur
300 MAYAS THESIS TITLE
[02] Title/Description. dim x dim in. Materials.
The proposal argues for classification as a form of positive motivation for public consciousness along with the acceptance of the border wall for its actual programmatic abilities. This intention is reflected by the decision to have the proposed gates facing perpendicular to the direction of the border; never making the architectural proposal a hindrance in any type of legal or illegal movement across the landscape.
301
The series of walls that would emerge via the accumulation of particular paths being activated begin to act as a semi-permeable membrane --or a gate system- acting as an ethical attempt to differentiate between the motivations of the movement and becoming a noninvasive archive. The categorization of people is not typically considered an objective point of view; however, objectivity begins to assert itself as one begins to engineer a terrain that has the ability to respond to intention. The terrain begins to act responsible for the ethics and sensitivity of the situation, proposing a physical memory in the form of an educational monument. This thesis addresses the concepts of classification and identification while proposing an architectural solution for reinterpretation.
MAYA BARTUR
The idea of sequence was then applied to groups of tiles, always grouping a singular tile that would be encountered and activated with a set of tiles that would later be confronted along whatever path was indicated by the activation of the first tile. The implication was that whenever a person moved along a particular path, negative space left by one of these tiles would incrementally develop into a wall parallel to the path of movement.
[05] Wall program drawing series. Ink on vellum, 32 x 22 in.
302 MAYAS THESIS TITLE
303
MAYA BARTUR
304 MAYAS THESIS TITLE
[03] Projected articulated path dwg i & ii. 32x11. ink on mylar layered over light sensitive photo paper.
[04] Articulated path dwg i & ii. 32x11. ink on mylar layered over light sensitive photo paper
305
MAYA BARTUR
[07] Preliminary paths model. Cast resin with imbedded plexiglass, 32 x 11 in.
[06] Preliminary paths model. Cast resin with imbedded plexiglass, 32 x 11 in.
307
308 MAYAS THESIS TITLE
[10] System drawing of hydraulics. Ink on mylar layered over light sensitive photopaper, 32 x 11.
[09] Preliminary site determination drawing. Ink on mylar, 32 x 11 in.
[08] Intent informed path drawing series. Ink on layered mylar, cardstock, and photosensitive paper, 32 x 11 in.
309
MAYA BARTUR
[12] Title/Description. dim x dim in. Materials.
[11] Hydraulic system grid model. Syringes, latex, plexiglass, and steel, 24 x 24 x 20 in.
311
MAYA BARTUR
[14] System drawing of hydraulics. Ink on mylar, 32 x 11 in.
[13] Hydraulic system grid model. Syringes, latex, plexiglass, and steel, 24 x 24 x 20 in.
313
MAYA BARTUR
[15] Hydraulic system grid model. Syringes, latex, plexiglass, and steel, 24 x 24 x 20 in.
315
MAYA BARTUR
[17]
OVERLEAF
Terrain pathway model. Resin, plaster, steel, and plexiglass, 32 x 11 in.
[16] Series of details of terrain pathway model. Resin, plaster, steel, and plexiglass, 32 x 11 in.
316 MAYAS THESIS TITLE
[19]
OVERLEAF
Detail of intent separated model. Silicone, latex, syringes, steel and MDF, 32 x 22 x 48 in.
[18] Detail of intent separated model. Silicone, latex, syringes, steel and MDF, 32 x 22 x 48 in.
320 MAYAS THESIS TITLE
321
MAYA BARTUR
YYael Erel is a registered architect in New York and Israel and graduated with honors from The Cooper Union School of Architecture where she received the Irma Giustino Weiss Prize for creative achievement. In 2006, she co-founded YEStudio - Lightexture, a New York based collaboration with lighting designer Avner Ben Natan. Their work focuses on the interplay of architecture, art, and light through building projects, lighting installations, and the design and fabrication of light fixtures. Erel and Ben Natan have recently received a patent approval for an overlapping leaves mechanism that operates as a light control aperture. Prior to founding YEStudio, Erel worked for award-winning Diane Lewis Architect and ROART Inc. Erel is a visiting architecture design critic at Harvard GSD, has taught Architecture Design Studios at Columbia University and The Cooper Union, and has been teaching Architecture design at Pratt institute since 2004 where she received a faculty development grant to develop environmental lighting fixtures. She has lectured at The Bronfman Center, City College School of Architecture, and the PDC lecture series at SOM. Her work has been published in Metropolis Magazine, artnow Magazine, and Architect Magazine among others. Her work has been exhibited at the Krakow Biennial, Pratt Institute Gallery, and other New York galleries.
Christoph a. Kumpusch is a New York-based architect and a PhD candidate in architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is a Leonardo da Vinci Fellow; USAA Scholar, and NCEA National Collegiate Engineering Award winner for outstanding commitment to academic excellence. He was a MAK Center Architect in Residence in 2003 and has taught at Columbia University, Cooper Union, Cornell University, OSU, SciArc, and Guangzhou University in China. His studios and seminars focus on political space, affect, and the critical role of technology across cultures. He is co-author of System Wien; IDEA(u)topsy; IDEA(l) and consultant to the Architectural Forum and Association for Urban Development and Research in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Current projects include a community embassy in Kenya, a housing development in Budapest, and a light-pavilion in Chengdu in collaboration with Lebbeus Woods and Steven Holl Architects.
YAEL EREL
CHRISTOPH a. KUMPUSCH
CRITICS
IDEA(L) Thesis Studio FA2008- SP2009 Critics : Yael Erel and Christoph a. Kumpusch Edited by Laura Haak, Jeanne Chiang, and Areum Han Layout by Laura Haak Cover artwork by Laura Haak Proofreader: Ryan Joseph Simons
© Of the texts, their respective authors. © Of the photographs, their respective photographers. © Of the work, Pratt Institute. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the permission in writing from the publisher.
www.idea-l.org
www.idea-l.org