Process Book - Graduate Architecture Studio IV: Interdisciplinary Focus

Anh Duy Pham Prof. Julie Rogers Varland ARCH 747 - Graduate Architecture Studio IV Fall 2016

Table of Contents 4

Assignment 1A - Ten Types of Spaces

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Assignment 1B - Spatial Analysis: Generating 3D Space from a 2D image

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Assignment 2A - Photographer Case Studies

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Assignment 2B - Spatial Analysis: Generating 3D Space from a 2D image

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Assignment 3 - My Daily Routine or My Wander

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Assignment 4 - An Invisible City

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Final Project

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Reflection

ASSIGNMENT 1A Ten Types of Spaces Find and photograph ten types of spaces, choosing from the following list: - Translucent space - Soft space - Accelerated space - Thin space - Transitional space - Organized space - Intimate space - Hierarchcal space - Energized space - Interstitial space - Activated space - Deep space - Layered space - Framed space - Commodified space - Prefaced space - Interpersonal space - Entangled space - Alienating space - Continuous space - Compressed space - Disconnected space - Violent space - Potentialized space

Chosen spaces: - Continuous Space - Energized Space - Entangled Space - Framed Space - Hierarchical Space - Interstitial Space - Intimate Space - Layered Space - Soft Space - Translucent Space

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Continuous Space

Energized Space

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Entangled Space

Framed Space

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Hierarchical Space

Interstitial Space

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Intimate Space

Layered Space

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Soft Space

Translucent Space

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ASSIGNMENT 1B Spatial Analysis: Generating 3D Space from a 2D image Using two 8” x 10” images from your ten types of spaces assignment, generate a 3D depiction of the spatial characteristics and meaning of each image. Push and pull or extract the spaces from the image and depict them with real materials and in 3D. Provide a concise analysis/design statement for each 3D piece.

Guidelines - The image reference remains 8” x 10” - Shifting scales to understand 3-dimensionality will be important - Multiple layers can be made - Add 3D information to front (foreground), middleground (zone of the photo image), and background zone (behind or beyond the image) which is implied space of the image - Materials used are determined by each student and what is implied by the images. Translation of this information is important.

Be wary of being literal in your translations - Include any information from the reading(s) or other concepts to your statements Evaluation Criteria - Sensibility/thought of interpretation of 3D space in photos - Ability to comprehend concepts beyond literal visual meaning (spatial and material) - Development and design of the 3D piece to communicate the spatial language of the 2D image - Quality and craft of generated 3D information - Concision and quality of analysis/design statement

3D Generation #1 - Soft Space The first model, translates the spatial qualities from the 2D imagel captures the moment between two volumes.

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3D Generation #2 - Translucent Space The second model emphasizes the emptiness of the space by using transparent materials. The layers with different cutouts showing the planes in three-dimensional perspective. These layers are moveable horizontally, suggesting the formlessness of the space.

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ASSIGNMENT 2A Photographer Case Studies Select a photographer from the list below, and provide: - A paragraph summary of biographical information - A paragraph describing the direction(s) of their photographic works - A paragraph articulating your insights of the connections to architectural issues (space, perception – a different way of seeing, composition, structure, form, materials, etc.)

- Six examples of the photographer (printed, 8” x 10”) Alfred Stieglitz Bernd + Hilla Becher Margaret Bourke-White Tokihiro Sato Eugen Wiskovsky Andreas Gursky Henri Cartier-Bresson Hiroshi Sugimoto Lazslo Moholy-Nagy Candida Hoffer Edward Muybridge Thomas Ruff Edward Weston Thomas Struth Lotte Jacobi Lewis Baltz Robert Capa John Divola Philippe Halsman George Rousse Robert Frank Brassai Yousef Karsh Man Ray Fernanda Canales Herbert Bayer Miroslav Hak Josef Sudek Andre Kertesz Jaroslav Rossler Lewis W. Hine Yuval Cadmon Anton Giulio Bragaglia Alexander Rodchenko Charles Swedlund Imre Kinszki Ray Metzker Imogen Cunningham Bernice Abbott Ilse Bing

Photographer Andreas Gursky Biographical Info Andreas Gursky is a German photographer known for his large scale aerial pictures focusing on built and natural environments. Gursky was born in 1955 and studied under Hilla and Bernd Becher, from whom Gursky was influenced by their industrial machinery and architecture. Gursky’s works have been in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern in London.

Now he’s currently working in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Directions of works Andreas Gursky photographs globalism. Besides vast natural environments, Gusky shows his strong interest in various enormously artificial spaces such as high-rise facades, office lobbies, stock exchanges, big box retailers, etc. Gursky didn’t rely upon digital platform until 1990s, since when he started using computers to enhance his subject matters in term of size. He focuses on contemporary world seen faraway and dispassionately. His style is ambiguous, impassive and straightforward with little or without explanation. He seeks “to learn from the visual world, to learn how everything sticks together”, and leaves the audience to make up their own minds.

Connection to architectural issues Andreas Gursky’s works bring a different perspective: the objects are not the objects themselves but their tangible and intangible characteristics such as colors, orders, repetition, and especially the sense of spaces that are emphasized in aerial views.

For example, his photograph Paris Montparnasse (1993) (below) depicts high density high rise building. However, the object is not the building itself but the division on its façade that implies the fabric of industrial society. This picture is also relevant to my thesis topic, in which I explore the issues of commune housings and propose a new typology of spaces, which is adaptable and flexible for unknown future needs of the inhabitants.

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Paris Montparnasse (1993)

Shanghai (2000) The photograph depicts overwhelming vertical scale and vivid color of the hotel. He made several pics of three different floors and then digitally fused them into one large picture showing a sublime luxurious beauty.

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Diptych 99 Cent Store II (2001) Incredibly detailed, massively digitally manipulated, expressing the massive manmade environment.

Amazon (2016) Express the modern industry with a sea of packages swarming. Highly details and overwhelming.

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Les Mees (2016)

Cocoon II (2008) A photo taken at “the cocoon club”, a well-known Frankfurt dance club designed by Gursky’s friend. The pic showcases the enormous capacity of club goers and its unusual design.

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3D Generation #1 - Paris Montparnasse (1993) Spatial Analysis: Generating 3D Space from a 2D image

Concept: The model is constructed by four layers. The front layer starts with a basic square grid whose patterns slightly shift and get smaller in the layers behind. The result is a set of variations of patterns that implies the diversity of lifestyle behind the regulated building facade shown in the photograph.

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3D Generation #2 - Shanghai (2000) Spatial Analysis: Generating 3D Space from a 2D image Concept: the model abstractly captures the form of the hotel’s atrium by using circular folds. The two sets of circular folds intersecting each other is sort of spontaneous. Yet, it allows viewers to move and shift, thus the space formed in between two sets is totally open to the manipulation of viewers.

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Assignment 3 My Daily Routine or My Wander Read the excerpt from Debordered Space: Indeterminacy within the Visual Perception of Space, by Markus Jatsch (2004). Using photography and some drawing, develop in 2D a communication of a routine that you have connecting interior and exterior conditions, or a ‘wander’ experience in Savannah.

There is a history of studying the links between the humanmade physical environment and the psychological state of the inhabitant. The dérive is a behavior strategy used by the Situationists (see Guy Debord’s Theory of the Dérive) that recognizes ‘psychogeographical contours’ within the city. You can read more about this and use this as a feature in how you see, document, communicate, and/or analyze the information for this project.

Consider: - Scale manipulations to indicate importance or lack of importance - Ways to indicate duration of time - Ways to indicate focus and peripheral information - Ways to indicate the various physical and emotional dimensions of the experience - Ways to indicate memory and meaning and curiosity, as appropriate The dimensions of the project are determined by the subject and student. Reference all supplemental resources on Blackboard provided for this project.

Project Statement Wandering is moving aimlessly. Wandering is full of spontaneities. Spontaneous plans, spontaneous walk, spontaneous look, spontaneous observation, spontaneous talks, spontaneous thoughts. Spontaneity is not wandering, however. It’s just a part yet wonderful part of wandering, and this project is one of it.

Going somewhere during the quarter is not common. Taking a 15-hour train is rare. Running through a tunnel is occasional. The lightened moment when it escapes the tunnel is extraordinary.

Capturing such moment is spontaneous.

I ran to the back of car, waited there with a hope that there’d be another tunnel. There was one. I shot one side of the empty car, then shot the another as the train escaped the tunnel. Putting together two sets of pictures, one dark one bright, I tried to freeze the lightened moment from a spontaneous thought, on a spontaneous train, in a spontaneous trip.

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Assignment 4 Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino Using photography and layering techniques, communicate one city from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities* which abstracts the information.

(An example is ‘palimpsest’ indicating the trace of something previous to indicating a ‘history’. This term developed during the time when paper was very expensive, and one would draw, then erase and use it again for another drawing or purpose, and the grooves on the surface of the paper from the drawing instrument or pencil would record a relief of the previous drawing, something that the couldn’t be erased – these grooves or impressions would remain and be legible through the subsequent drawings. For issues of previous histories or memory in the story, think about and experiment with how palimpsest can be conveyed or what a version of palimpsest would be in photography).

Physical thickness can be used for this assignment, but no farther than a bas relief technique (foreshortening dimensions).

Statement to include: - Interpretation of story of invisible city - Ideas pursued to for the communication (what you made using photography and various material choices, if used) - How (techniques) used in abstracting the specific information in the city story.

Valdrada Cities and eyes.

The ancient built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water.

Thus the traveler, arriving, sees two cities: one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, up-side down.

Nothing exists or happens in the one Valdrada that the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so constructed that its every point would be reflected in its mirror, and the Valdrada down in the water contains not only all the flutings and juttings of the facades that rise above the lake, but also the rooms’ interiors with ceilings and floors, the perspective of the halls, the mirror of the wardrobes.

Valdrada’s inhabitants know that each of their action is, at once, that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of images, and this awareness prevents them from succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness.

Even when lovers twist their naked bodies, skin against skin, seeking the position that will give on the most pleasure in the other, even when murderers plunge the knife into the black veins of the neck and more clotted blood pours out the more they press the blade that slips between the tendons, it is not so much their copulation or murdering that matters as the copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror.

At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it. Not everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force when mirrored. The twin cities are not equal, because nothing that exists or happens in Valdrada is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and gesture inverted, point by point. The two Vladradas live for each other, their eye interlocked; but there is no love between them.

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Project Statement Valdrada has a special relationship with its twin under the lake: each city brings life to the other and simultaneously against the other. I see Valdrada and its reflection as two separate individualities. They may share similarities in the outer form but the insides are different. To indicate reflection, there is no better material than a mirror as the most honest communication between the two “cities�. Also, as the two cities are distinctive, the design seeks for a unique approach to manipulate one’s reflection without destroying its reality.

A frame that contains two panels intersecting at the right angle was made.

The frame faced upward and the camera pointed downward directly to the intersection of the panels, divided the picture frame into two vertical parts: paper on one side that was reflected by a mirror on the other side. Water color was chosen as the secondary material for its transparency and unique process of forming tones. There were two stages and each included four different strokes of water color that were photographed twice: while flowing down with the water and after they dried. In the composition, the first set was organized in the way that the dried strokes on one side and the flowing strokes on the other side. The second set was put on top of the first one but in reversed direction through the vertical division between the mirror and the paper.

The result was a symmetrical composition. However, one can easily detect the small differences when he/she looks closer to the details. Those elements are not fighting. Instead, each element of one side is the complimentary and perhaps even a better image of that on the other side, suggesting that the two Valdradas complete each other while surviving on each own.

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Final Project Installation-architecture generated from Photography (Perception, Space, Material, and Detail)

Installation-architecture generated from Photography (Perception, Space, Material, and Detail) Generate an architecture based on the idea of the house (per Bachelard) from photography process.

Requirements: Installation is considered full-scale, 1:1 relationship with human scale Allowable area: from floor to ceiling, and side-to-side of your desk area, 3-feet in back, and below desk.

To have a sense of outer and inner space Sources: Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard Powerpoint of installation examples on Blackboard Previous assignments (ARCH747)

Chapter 6 Corner The Poetics of Space is a unique exploration where Barchelard takes us to a journey of how our perceptions of houses shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams. In chapter 6, Barchelard talks about corner as a “chamber of being” that store our memories and dreams.

“To begin with, the corner is a haven that ensures us one of the things we prize most highly - immorbility.”

“The corner is a sort of half-box, part walls, part door. It will serve as an illusion for the dialectics of inside and outside.”

“But life in corners, and the universe itself withdrawn into a corner with the daydreamer, is a subject about which poets will have more to tell us. They will not hesitate to give this daydream all its reality.”

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Initial concept Experience the corner where each viewer can recall their memories when they look at it.

The sketch shows the overall installation with dimensions. There are two 2x4 ft panels at right angle blocked by another 2x4ft panel in the front. The reason is to hide the experience inside the “corner.”

On both side, there are two narrow gaps that are big enough for one person looking into at once.

The second and third pictures (right) show developed model of the structure inside. I use the folding layers to suggest multiple layers of memories inside each person. The folding structures bring two different views from each side. The third picture shows my plan to put the images on the folding structure. There are happy images with colors (birthday, graduation, etc.) on one side, and sad images with gray scale (family lost, low grade, etc.) on the other side. These images represent happy and sad memories of a person. When a person look into each side the “corner”, the images will recall their own memories, either happy or sad. The images will be printed on transparent/translucent papers, which will let the light go through and leave interesting effects on the interior panels. The top of the structure will be cover as well.

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Final concept Instead of using a panel in the front, the final concept will let the foldings open to the viewers. Also, I use pictures of facial emotions instead of happy and sad images.

The reason is to avoid randomly finding pictures as well as to engage more with the viewers.

The picture show the final small-scaled model with the location of the pictures. I took these pictures of my colleagues and chose to focus on the details on their face in different emotions.

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Project Statement Corner of Memories Bachelard Gaston’s The Poetics of Space is a unique exploration of how our perceptions of houses shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams. In the sixth chapter, Bachelard discussed about corner. He described corner as “a sort of half-box, part walls, part door” and “serves as an illustration for the dialectics of inside and outside.” To Bachelard, corner brings different perceptions, either physical or intellectual. Corner implies “immobility” but at the same time, it is the “chamber of being” that reflects our memories and liberates our dreams.

Using photography with an architectural perspective, the Corner of Memories evokes viewers’ memories through a series of emotional photographs. There are three elements in the Corner of Memories: the chamber, the layers, and images.

The chamber – the physical form of corner - is created by two “walls” with floor and ceiling. At the center of the chamber, a complex of intersecting corners indicates our consciousness - layers of thoughts, memories, and dreams. The gaps, letting natural light into the space, reflects the “dialectics of inside and outside” from Bachelard’s interpretation. The last element is a series of image, whose subjects are different details of facial expression. Each brings different perceptions to viewers. By looking at a part instead of the overall facial expression, one may recall their own memories with the emotions he/she interprets.

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Reflection Gradudate studio IV is a special studio that collaborates with another major and I’m glad that I took professor Varland’s studio which collborates with a photography class. Photography is one of my hobbies and both classes this quarter gave me new experiences and perspectives about the relationship between architecture and photography.

The assignments in studio especially those about spatial analysis, in which we translated twodimensional perception of spaces into three-dimensional spatial qualities in abstract ways, changed the way I observe the physical world around. I enjoyed the process because it is not only opposite to the way architectural photographers work (observe architecture and capture the perceptions of space), but also a unique tool to explore spatial qualities.

In term of photography, I appriciate and enjoy the process behind the darkroom as well as the effort of experiencing to produce the best works at the end. However, integrating photography with architectural perspective is a difficult process to me. This happened in the final project in which we designed an architectural installation using photography to illustrate perceptions of (a part or) a house. The result was not as satisfied as I expected but for me, it successfully conveyed my idea at a certain degree.

There are still a lot to learn about architecture and photography. From the experiences I get from both classes this quarter, I have a more sensitive notion in observing the pysical environments. At the same time, photography opens new exploration to architecture and I believe this will be helpful for my thesis in the next two quarters.

Thank you!

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