Wonder as an Interruption

WONDER as an

INTERRUPTION

Wonder as an Interruption A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture in the Department of Architecture of the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning May 2016 Anjali Patel Bachelor of Arts, Psychology/Social Behavior Bachelor of Arts, Urban Studies Committee Chair: Vincent Sansalone, M.Arch Comittee Member: Udo Greinacher, M.Arch

Abstract Many have spent their lives in search for wonder. In architecture it can transpire in three methods: frame, spectacle, interruption. Interruption, the most subtle of the three, is something that can be happened upon, noticed as the strange in the familiar. It is this method, which is unraveled through definition to understand its true duplicitous origins. It is explored through architectural precedents to understand the author’s bias of what makes one wondrous. To further understand the role of interruption at a smaller scale, traditional architectural elements are dismantled to understand their potential beyond our assumptions of each. All of which, create a catalogue for wonder as an interruption. Which, in this case, is applied to downtown Chicago’s Pedway system; an application which is merely one example of many: a qualitative study of wonder as an interruption transpired through translation. The beauty of interruption is the potential of possibility rather than a set destination. The beauty of design is there is no one answer rather many approaches. This thesis sets the scene for interruptions to come.

To M.

12

54

METHOD

ELEMENTS

This is a qualitative study on wonder as an interruption.

It is separated into two parts: catalogue (site-less), and application (sitespecific).

Elemental parts of the built world as defined by the research initiative done in conjunction with Harvard, Rem Koolhaas’s Elements of Architecture.

16

90

DEFINITION

SURFACE

Unraveling wonder from its origin to its thoughts in philosophy. Once set, it begins to go through methods of wonder in architecture.

Dives into surface in relation to Semper’s four elements and with Chicago’s surface as well as beyond. Closer look into the geology of the city.

103

144

SITE

CONCLUSION

Focused in on the loop in downtown Chicago, the Pedway is examined. Several opportunities outlined, researched for potential interruption.

Intent, exploration, research findings summarized.

Possible future research opportunities outlined.

112

148

INTERRUPTION

APPENDIX

Design iterations.

Conceptual explorations.

Sequence studies.

Narrative creation.

Overall design explored and illustrated.

References listed including overall thesis diagram, picture index, and end notes.

IMAGES

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

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Elisofon, Eliot. Duchamp descending stairs. Photograph. Source: http://56.media.tumblr. com/tumblr_lyd8f2vXGW1qbz9meo1_1280.jpg (Accessed January 14, 2015) Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagrams.

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Siskind, Aaron. Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation. Photograph. Source: https://smedia-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/2c/6d/43/2c6d43e7a7e3e9cea0db4afdb9e31b02.jpg (Accessed January 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Collage.

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Judd, Donald. KrĂśller-MĂźller Museum. Photograph. Source: http://www.michielmorel. nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Judd-1980-Kr-M%C3%B6ller-Sanna-e-300x199.jpg (Accessed January 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Collage.

Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Collage.

Arsham, Daniel. Curtain. Photograph. 2007. Source: https://www.yatzer.com/sites/ default/files/article_images/2515/The-ARchiTecture-of-Daniel-Arsham-yatzer-16.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015).

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Physical Models.

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagrams.

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Magee, James. The Hill. Photograph. Source: http://media.virbcdn.com/cdn_images/ resize_800x800/16/ff46ffca5c13a7de-1215179880213.jpeg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Neimeyer, Oscar. Brasilia. Photograph. Source: http://assets.yellowtrace.com.au/wpcontent/uploads/2014/06/Brasilia-National-Museum-by-Oscar-Neimier-Yellowtrace-01. jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Dujardin, Filip. Fiction Series. Digital Collage. 2007. Source: http://media1.artspace.com/ media/filip_dujardin/unitiled_2010_green/filip_dujardin_8076_2571175651_1024x768. jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Eliasson, Olafur. The Weather Project. Photograph. Source: https://najaatelier.files. wordpress.com/2011/10/tumblr_ks8pwixz3y1qantz5o1_500.jpg?w=637 (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Fehn, Sverre. Nordic Pavillion. Photograph. Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg. com/564x/29/ef/cc/29efccd114b1d9708b5ee48c009c7573.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Blur Building. Photograph. Source: http://payload350. cargocollective.com/1/18/586291/9305594/Arch_DSR_blur_01_1000.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Zumthor, Peter. Bruder Klaus Field Chapel. Photograph. Source: http://spinocchiafreund. com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/SF-World-Bruder-Klaus-Field-Chapel03.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Digital Diagram.

Miss, Mary. Perimeters/Pavillions/Decoys. Photograph. Source: http://socks-studio.com/ img/blog/mary-miss_decoy-pavilion_04.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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Patel, Anjali. 2015. Photographs.

Freight Train Tunnels. Photograph. Source: http://mascontext.com/wp-content/ uploads/2011/05/09_chicago_freight_tunnels_cover1.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015) Cable Car Tunnels. Photograph. Source: http://www.cable-car-guy.com/images/chicago_ tunnel_002.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015) TARP Deep tunnel. Source:http://media.jrn.com/images/ b99198589z.1_20140208181841_000_gn94nlet.1-0.jpg (Accessed March 14, 2015)

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I METHOD

THE ONLY WAY TO BE FULLY PRESENT IS TO BE LOST.

WALTER BENJAMIN

This is a qualitative study on wonder as an interruption. It is separated into two parts: catalogue (site-less), and application (site-specific). It is set up in this manner to allow other researchers interested in wonder as an interruption to access the catalogue with which they can apply to their own site. On the other hand, the application section provides a test run which future researchers can learn from and improve on. Ergo, depending on the site and its normalcy, one can focus on the specific elements which define set space. Here translation takes hold: how the specific instance or instances of wonder as an interruption can transpire.

I

III

METHOD

ELEMENTS

This is a qualitative study on wonder as an interruption.

It is separated into two parts: catalogue (site-less), and application (sitespecific).

Elemental parts of the built world as defined by the research initiative done in conjunction with Harvard, Rem Koolhaas’s Elements of Architecture.

II

IV

DEFINITION

SURFACE

Unraveling wonder from its origin to its thoughts in philosophy. Once set, it begins to go through methods of wonder in architecture.

Dives into surface in relation to Semper’s four elements and with Chicago’s surface as well as beyond. Closer look into the geology of the city.

The catalogue consists of concepts in philosophy and art (loosely encompassing art, architecture, music, etc.) as Deleuze considers,“philosophy as the production of concepts,”1 and art that creates “affects and percepts, ‘blocks of space-time.’”2 Philosophy is the main means by which wonder and interruption as well as subsets of each are defined conceptually. Whereas the realm of art provides precedents of composition, by understanding what makes each piece successful (the chosen precedents introduce the author’s personal bias, a lens to what makes successful architecture). The chapters are separated as follows:

V

VII

SITE

CONCLUSION

Focused in on the loop in downtown Chicago, the Pedway is examined. Several opportunities outlined, researched for potential interruption.

Intent, exploration, research findings summarized.

Possible future research opportunities outlined.

VI

VIII

INTERRUPTION

APPENDIX

Design iterations.

Conceptual explorations.

Sequence studies.

Narrative creation.

Overall design explored and illustrated.

References listed including overall thesis diagram, picture index, and end notes.

II DEFINITION

MOMENT OF SURPRISE

CURIOSITY’S SHORT ATTENTION SPAN MOVES ON

WONDER IS A BALANCING ACT

TERROR ENSUES

OF SURPRISE

ITY’S SHORT NTION SPAN MOVES ON

WONDER IS A ANCING ACT

ROR ENSUES

won · der noun

To begin to understand wonder, one must understand time. A delicate balancing act between two extremes: curiosity and terror. It begins with curiosity which quickly vanishes “when the cause of a surprising phenomenon is discovered.”3

The Approach This moment of surprise implies that one happens upon an instance. The approach can be a set path, such as traveling by train, or one of choice, a path we set for ourselves, both leading to a reveal: around the corner, in between, by trajectory, ascending, descending, meandering, breaching, submerging, emerging, from below, and from above. Before being lifted from our ordinary experience, one’s curiosity must first be sparked, the first step to wonder. During the Renaissance, “Wunderkammer, or curiosity cabinet—the ancestor of the art museum— began with the insatiable urge to own exotic and alien objects.”4 Appropriately, wonder derives from“German Wunder.”5 People came to “enjoy the experience of not knowing and not understanding.” A place where their curiosity’s short attention span could be reinforced by new phenomena or shock, rather than basking in a moment. Jean-Luc Nancy said it best, “Shock unworks; awe makes sense. Shock punctuates; awe enchains. In shock thinking loses everything and in awe, everything returns, at once more and less than thinking had thought it to be.”6 Instead of moving on as curiosity does, wonder lingers.

Before moving into awe, let’s take a step back, and denounce the overuse of the term wonder, and the “sugarcoating it has acquired in contemporary usage,”7 returning it to its true dual nature.

Definition Wonder derives from “the Old English wundor… but also with Wunde: cut, gash, wound.”8 In Greek, “thambos”9 translates roughly to “wonder or fear.”10 This duality reigns through multiple texts, each reiterating wonder being “inherently ambivalent.”11 Appropriately the Oxford English Dictionary sites “the origin of wonder as ‘unknown.’”12 It is the unknown in the known, “the strangeness of the most familiar,”13 which wonder thrives. Socrates claims “wonder as the origin of all philosophy.”14 It deals with slippage in thought, in translation, “open not only to the fantastic and the amazing, but also to the dreadful and threatening.”15 Where Socrates embraces the unknown, Aristotle stands against wonder and unknowing; rather, he proposes a “remedy for wonder in the knowledge of cause and effect.”16 Where Socrates values wonder for the thought it raises without being resolved, Aristotle values wonder for it catapults the participant to understand what confounds them through causal investigation. In line with Aristotle, Francis Bacon was perhaps the “most exhaustive philo-scientific exhauster of wonder.”17 He denounced wonder as “broken knowledge”18 which he believed should be overcome for the sake of wisdom. His obsession led him to collect and record every strange object he could get his hands on from the four corners of the Earth.19 The only issue with both Aristotle and Francis Bacon’s view of wonder was that “causal knowledge gradually replaces the very wonder that set it in motion.”20 Thus, the unknown is key in wonder.

Moreover, Heidegger imposed wonder opens the door to a new beginning, but before taking that leap “all thinking can do is prepare the leap by facing and enduring beings withdrawal.”21 By facing the contrary, to which we are most familiar, it allows wonder to transpire by opening the portal to possibility: from what is to what could be. “’Our relation to the obvious is always dull’”22 it is what we expect, something that is truth in our everyday existence, in our immediate environment. In uncovering the unexpected in the expected, wonder reveals itself.

Consequently, Hannah Arendt adds an interesting take: first, wonder offers an “escape from reality”23 or suspension from ordinary experience, and after, a “state of vulnerability into which wonder’s double movement undoubtedly throws thinking.”24 It is this state of uncertainty which makes wonder, as it has an innate duality. On one end, its exciting to experience something novel, at the same time, there is a sense of uneasiness, a primal response to something we cannot categorize, attempting to measure out its potential of being a threat.

It is the balance between, which makes wonder so captivating. It is this give and take, “the double movement of inhalation which disrupts all interiority and exhalation, which affirms existence precisely by disrupting it.”25 Terror and Amazement. Horror and Admiration. Anger and Resolution. Repulsion and Fascination. Distress and Expectation. Taking in and Letting go. “Perhaps dwelling in wonder is merely a matter of learning to breathe.”26

Inhale.

Exhale.

Terror What happens when this balance overstays its welcome?

Socrates, our pro-wonder champion, admits, it is “nearly impossible to sustain.”27 “Rather, wonder wonders at that which conditions--and for that reason ultimately eludes--the mechanisms of calculation, comprehension and possession themselves.” This is partly due to the “particularly fearful, anxious, or terrifying aspects of wonder are often highly unpleasant.”28 It keeps problems unresolved, caught in a cloud of uncertainty, “renders the thinker incapable of doing the kind of simple calculating.”29 What is alarming is it is “initially something known and familiar. But when what threatens, has the character of something completely unfamiliar, fear becomes horror.

And when something threatening is encountered in the aspect of the horrible, and at the same time is encountered as something alarming (suddenness), fear becomes terror.”30 Unraveling one’s immediate reality.

Aptly, terror’s Latin origin,“terrorem (nominative terror)” is defined as “‘great fear, dread, alarm, panic; object of fear, cause of alarm, terrible news.’”31

WONDER METHODS

As time and balance of wonder have been illustrated, time has come to overlap wonder within architecture.

Wonder’s methods within architecture can be separated into three categories: the Frame, the Spectacle, and the Interruption. Defining the three should add clarity to their differences, clarifying the design exploration of wonder as an interruption.

frame spectacle interruption

Frame Let’s begin with Frame. Within architecture, the Frame literally frames a view. In this most basic form “a window is an object or a device providing a function, but it is also a location, a destination within architecture.”32 The scale of the frame is, more often than not, small as it merely contains a view. An example of such is well-illustrated

by Donald Judd, a minimal artist, who explored Frame through his work in Marfa, Texas. In his work before 1946, “the edges of the rectangle are a boundary the end of the picture. The composition must react to the edges and the rectangle must be unified, but the shape of the rectangle is not stressed; the parts are more important, and the relationships of color and form occur among them.”33 The threshold of the frame adds control to the destinationfocused architectural wonder, controlling what sights are worth highlighting. It dissects the frame as “something in its surroundings, which suggests an object or figure in its space, in which these are clearer instances of a similar world - that’s the main purpose of painting.”34 Nature becomes the painting which architecture seeks to contain for its audience.

Spectacle The Spectacle on the other hand, is consumed by wonder. In terms of scale everything about the space becomes engulfed in wonder. Take the circus: form draws attention, program seeks to captivate, but soon enough, this collection of eccentricities becomes the norm, the expected. The allure of the spectacle is innately destination-driven, whereas the Frame holds beauty at a certain distance. The dictionary defines “spectacle as a dazzling display, something remarkable to be seen or viewed. In a fiendish twisted way, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 fit this definition precisely. They were emblems of spectacular destruction.�35 In terms of 9/11, the US had never had a terrorist attack at that caliber before, no one was prepared, immediately there was a moment of shock, and awe (disbelief) since this was the last thing any of us expected to see on our television screens.

Let’s turn back the clock of the long now, before 9/11 when the twin towers were the target of a different criminal, a tight-rope walker named Philippe Petit. He instantly became obsessed with the idea of tight-rope walking across the twin towers when he first laid eyes on them in the newspaper. His walk was coined the “artistic crime of the century,” taking years to plan and eventually catching a lucky break to finally do the impossible. The level of danger and unexpected nature of the entire act, brought onlookers to tears, the poetic impossibility of it all. His “45-minute frolic on a cable stretched the 200 feet between those looming towers, which stood 1,350 feet above the ground. The 24-year-old Frenchman crossed the distance eight times and enjoyed himself so thoroughly up there that the New York City policeman who eventually arrested him called him a ‘tightrope dancer’ and accurately noted: ‘I personally figured I was watching something somebody else would never see again in the world.’”36 The novel part of this entire endeavor is that everyone regardless of their cultural knowledge/ background became able to speak and be impacted by the fleeting spectacle they had just experienced. A policeman could voice his awe regardless of his conflicting intended actions, truly becoming suspended from his ordinary experience. Both of these examples demonstrate the idea, in terms of spectacle objectified, bearing “the branded looks of individual stars.”37

Interruption The Interruption like the other two is driven by context, but slightly different. Interruption entails “a rupture a space-time opening not intended as such but one that nevertheless takes place.”38 Breaking order, allowing for rhythmic pause,“puncturing of the Saying in the Said, in the constant tension between the potential of language to thematize and its primary modality as a response-ability toward the Other.”39 Interruption is about the slippage in translation, sound familiar? Wonder similarly balances its alter egos: curiosity and terror. Double movement reigns within both phenomena:“stretching communication to its limits, toward the Other.”40 Interruption’s“line separating Other-oriented from self-oriented communication does not run between these two-modes of communication but rather within each of them.”41 This is how Interruption’s mirrored selves compositionally work together. The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas supports “the idea that duality should be transformed into unity—that the social relation should end in communion.”42

What Levinas means is duality is the key to get the full story. Communication feeds our need to define everything, the drawback? It leaves no room for the unknown, the unexpected, the Other. Jacques Derrida chimes in speaking of “the double movement of overturning oppositional-conflictual dualities and fissuring an interval in between, an opening of positive displacement and transgression.”43 To reiterate, there is a clear importance of the double within interruption; in grasping this pure idea of the Double within wonder, architecture, communication, what have you, can open the conversation to what wonder as an interruption can translate to.

Artist and lead singer for the first art rock band, Devo, Mark Motherbaugh’s recent exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center, Myopia, dealt with just this duality. Obsessed with order, Mothersbaugh, takes symmetry to create mutant mirrored art pieces, as he is also a film composer, he takes the same approach, and mirrored a composition then applied it in a different film. Speaking of, The Pelleas Trilogy Part I: Smoke, Louis Langree, conductor at the Cincinnati Music Hall, spoke of oxymoron, listed a myriad of sayings: the sound of silence, dry drunk, silent scream, to name a few. He then furthered his point by handpicking excerpts, in which this duality was translated within the opera. The pieces complemented each other, but were also polar opposites. When played together, it became a back and forth, a conversation, something deeper than what the parts would be alone.

Wonder as an Interruption in its purest form confronts just that: a slippage in translation, breaking the rule, but still working compositionally.

The following models explore the various ways interruption can transpire through path, scale, element, and orientation.

PRECEDENTS

In order to understand composition, as well as introduce the author’s bias to the wondrous, the following were studied: a series of qualitative studies of architectural precedents dealing with moments of wonder.

This art installation, by artist James Magee, The Hill, is located near El Paso, Texas. This wondrous endeavor is highlighted due to its level of exclusivity and the hype it draws: located in the middle of nowhere, promising an experiential moment, and for its lavish price. It involves an eerie symmetrical form, reminescent of Stone Hedge, as it is the only built form for miles.

An interruption at the urban scale.

1. The Hill, James Magee

Brasilia is filled with elegant curves and pure forms, arguably Neimeyer’s greatest achievement. His design involves moments of literal interruption. An example of which is diagrammed: the ramp penetrating the enclosure, in one elegant, yet intrusive gesture.

A formal interruption

2. Brasilia, Oscar Neimeyer

Part of an imaginary series, Dujardin’s intent was to highlight the impossibility of the structure in this collage.

Another opportunity for wonder presents itself by how we percieve the environment in real-time. By real-time, I mean this design deals with perception at different points in the field. Here, there are two, possibly, three ways to experience this interaction: landscape, path, and the built.

A moving interruption.

3. Fiction Series, Filip Dujardin

An installation in the Tate Modern, The Weather Project dictates its arena. The mere grandeur of the sphere above (meant to represent the sun), not only floods the room, but compels visitors to soak in the moment by gravitating to the ground. The floor, an element rarely engaged in the stage of an art museum, becomes welcoming, an obvious response to the sublime experience presented.

A social interruption.

4. The Weather Project, Oalfur Eliasson

This pavillion ignites awe through its playul intersection with boundary. A conversation between inside/outside, nature/man-made, and solid/void. The ever-changing nature of the pavillion encourages movement. Not seeing the top of the tree also leaves some to the imagination, taking advantage of gestalt psychology, by allowing the participant to complete the trees on their own.

An interruption of the imagination.

5. Nordic Pavilion, Sverre Fehn

Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s masterpiece also speaks to boundary, but it goes a step further. It offers an opportunity for the user to decide what is defined as architecture. Is it the scaffolding (traditionally a temporary element)? The cloud (ephemeral yet spatial)? Their raincoat (true source of protection, individual shelter)? It remains open ended, just like the visual threshold of the composition, blurring lines between beginning and end. A natural gradation.

An ephemeral interruption.

6. Blur Building, DS+R

Zumthor masters wonder with materiality located in the middle of nowhere. This monolith initially peaks curiousity just as Magee’s installation had, but when entering, the interior unveils itself, becoming this spiritual, rich, textured, burnt wood with light cascading down from the opening above. Expectations shattered from cold pristine form, to a warm tact-driven interior.

An abrupt interruption.

7. Bruder Klaus FIeld Chapel, Peter Zumthor

This installation was so powerful as it gave birth to Rosalind Krausss’s diagram of sculpture in the expanded field. An ongoing question of landscape or architecture?

The brillance of this peice is it makes us question the one constant in our lives, the ground. We assume it to be solid/heavy, hold weight, yet this feat reverses our expectations, transforming it to lightweight/temporary.

Showcasing the unknown (void) in the known (ground).

An interruption which challenges our perception.

8. Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys, Mary Miss

III ELEMENTS

ELEMENTS

The following outlines elemental parts of the built world.

Defined by literature and part of a research initiative done in conjunction with Harvard, the elements are thoroughly studied within Rem Koolhaas’s Elements of Architecture.

This series of fifteen books dismantles the history of each architectural element allowing one to know, as well as unknow the element, revealing the inner war buried beneath each assumed surface. In accordance, this piece completes the catalogue as each of these elements presents an opportunity for the strange in the familiar, which to expand on depends on the context by which application can take flight. The following is an overview of each element on what it is and could be.

I KNO THAT KNOW NOTH

OW I W HING

SOCRATES

The floor is a intimate dance between “gravity and the upright body,”44 the stability in our everyday. Walls may move around, but the floor can be counted on as a constant. It becomes clear in section of its many forms: ground, on the ground, void, underground, stacking, false floor and relative floor (lack of gravity, outer space). Its default stability has been questioned by certain appropriations throughout history, one being the invention of the raised floor system, where the solid floor “becomes a secret cavity for hiding the building’s support system,”45 its guts. Questioning the very nature of the floor, its weight: heavy vs. lightweight. A solid “seeming floor could actually consist of multiple hallows: bubble decking uses a field of small recycled balls held in place with mesh, to replace areas in concrete slabs that are non-load bearing, dead mass.”46 In addition, the floor flows from room to room till it is contained by the threshold of the wall. There are moments were the floor is continuous, such as Adolf Loos’s bedroom designed for his wife, where the “floor creeps on the bed.”47 In other examples the floor can take on several uses: “tactile paving,”48 “radiant slab heating,”49 “trampoline floor,”50 etc. It can even challenge another element, the ramp, as seen in SANAA’s Rolex Learning Center, where the floor and ramp live in continuous tension. Where does one end and the other begin? The line is blurred.

Themes: heavy vs. lightweight, boundary vs. continuous, interior vs. exterior, section vs. plan.

FLOOR

The wall’s demise is the “discovery of flexibility”51 where it becomes a partition. This leads to the two types of wall: bearing wall and partition wall. Other types of walls include: woven wall, defensive wall, mud wall, brick wall, stone wall, jali, Chinese partitions, spirit wall, Japanese screen, wallpaper, fireproof wallboard, plasterboard, acoustic wall, cubicle wall, insulation, toilet partition, wet wall, movable partition, and the transformable wall.52 There is a wall which is intangible: the fourth wall “referring to the invisible plane separating stage and audience.”53 Another wall that no longer exists, due to a breach in code, is the Roman double wall. “Before the fire of 64 AD, ambiguously shared walls separated adjacent buildings.”54 After code, it was required to have a clear division between buildings. The wall is a symbol of separation, privacy. Jali, a perforated or patterned screen dissolves the solid wall but manages to “maintain the veil of privacy,”55 another attempt at pushing the threshold of the solid wall. Speaking of wall thickness and impact, there is a clear difference between the exterior and interior walls. Exterior is a brutish thick wall such as a bearing wall and the interior is less so, such as a toilet partition. Of course, there are exceptions to the delicate interior wall: wet wall, core wall, etc.

Themes: static vs. flexible, solid vs. perforated, heavy vs. lightweight, and the exterior vs. interior.

WALL

The ceiling has had a history of constant debate:“exposed vs. smooth,”56 the true vs. false ceiling. By true ceiling, Rem means the exposed, one that expresses the inner workings of the building such as Centre Pompidou by Jean Nouvel. The false on the other hand is a “poche which is off limits to architecture and the imagination of the user, false ceiling creates mystery in what is behind the banal plane.”57 One cannot talk about the false ceiling without mentioning “asbestos: the deadly fireproofing miracle.”58 This miracle material fails to hold up against natural disaster as the weakest surface, the “thinnest membrane of a building, the false ceiling is always the first victim.”59 Inevitably, war has been called on the false ceiling in most recent times, especially in the US and Europe, “tolerance has run out for the false ceiling and its regime of concealed control and supervision of the interior environment.”60 In an effort to make the ceiling work again, an interesting conversation comes when integrating the roof and ceiling.

For example “the installation of the plastic bottle lamp invests the raw roof underside with one of the typical function of the ceiling: illumination.”61 This appropriation allows for the unexpected within the expected: we expect a light made from a factory rather than one made from an everyday object, in this case, a plastic bottle. Furthermore, the ceiling unlike the floor are virtually constant, not interrupted by furniture, humans, or static furniture, unlike the floor, which makes the ceiling an ideal subject for radiant heating. Though the ceiling performs better, it never caught on.62 Regardless of debate on what is right and wrong, “the highest aspiration of the ceiling is to disappear and let the sky in or least to accurately simulate the sky.”63 Themes: exposed vs. hidden, true vs. false, roof vs. ceiling, expected vs. unexpected

CEILING

The elevator’s initial development was to imitate the divine (Greece and Rome).120 The modern elevator is a product of “technological alchemy: boring existing elements (the rope, the spring, the coil and the transistor) which had a dramatic impact on the shape of the cities and the shape of our bodies alike.”121 Elevators essential components include: safety break, electric motor, core, and traction.122 Recent attempts to transform the elevator have transpired in two ways: “increased development of elevator control,” and “desperate attempts to break out of the core.”123 Elevators were first associated with going underground; it only began to invoke thought to the sky within fantasy and science fiction.124 There were even attempts to move the elevator diagonally instead of just vertically or horizontally. Otis was attempting to create this, but due to not being able to afford taking the risk in face of the competition, a simplified elevator was produced, rather than an elaboration on the traditional elevator.125 This simple design flourished, but it squashed the potential of the elevator’s multi-axis movability as the norm for elevator travel.

Themes: Vertical Axis vs. Multi-axis, Underground vs.

Sky

ELEVATOR

The roof hopes to reach the heavens, particularly in the case of the dome. And in its most primitive origin, it expresses “social status and political stability.”64 Let’s now turn to the age old debate: flat or a pitched roof?

The automatic answer nowadays is going flat, even though there are many pros to pitched roofs (in terms of a scale of the home): effective drainage, durability, isolation space, storage space, extra habitable space, and it allows for proper chimney building.65 The cons of the flat roof deal with rain penetrating the building, impossible detection of leakage, shorter life time, costly isolation displacing the attic elsewhere in the volume of the building not as successfully, and chimney cooling becomes a concern.66 In terms of the future of the roof, engineers “share a common goal in building the roof with the thinnest shell for the largest roof span.”67 Themes: Flat vs. Pitched, Function vs. Aesthetics, Weight + Span

ROOF

The window has become generalized in modern times in terms of scale which “culminates to a glass curtain wall.”78 Before you couldn’t have glass without a window frame, a boundary, now the boundary has become all encompassing. The function of a window primarily is ventilation, illumination, filtration and framing.79 Compared to other architectural elements, the window is becoming obsolete, with the ceiling providing light, and the curtain wall replacing the window’s select framed view, overwhelming the user with “totalitarian transparency.”80 Window as a place draws attention to its stance as a destination, but also its possibility to disappear into anonymity.81 Types of windows include: casement (hinged on one side), pivoting (hinged on both sides), sash (two part which slide vertically or horizontally), arts and crafts, forticha (double glazing), and windows without glass (perforated, latticed, hinged, and carved).82 A spatial window type is the bay window. It assumes “threedimensionality becomes legible on the facade and inside becomes a treasured object… almost an enclosed balcony.”83 A classic characterization of the window was the frame, which contained a view from the inside (backdrop for a family photo) as well as one from the outside (a view).84 In its most minimal form, the window is just a “gap in the facade” 85 interruptions showcasing scenes of human activity. The romantic idea of the window, as a fixed perspective (a frame), was challenged by Le Corbusier’s ribbon windows, which promoted a landscape view mimicking the performance of a film camera, rather than the human eye.86 As industry standards improved, the need shifted from selection of views to bringing light into the space.87 The window has become streamlined in modern times, by ease, price and glass. Since glass overpowers the frame today, it should confront issues of sun protection, radiation, redirection, fire, and sound.88 The issue with the curtain wall is it renders the window un-openable, showcasing the importance of control with no access to the outside. Both Apple’s and Google’s headquarters are part of this immersive circumstance; integrated in the environment reenacting the primitive peaceful landscapes that corporate offices lack.89 Themes: Everywhere vs. Nowhere, Frame vs. Spatial, Inside vs. Outside, Control vs. Transparency.

WINDOW

The fireplace has more or less disappeared as a discrete object or place. With technology improving more and more, the fireplace has been separated through the building, rather than being the focal point it once was.109 It lives as a nostalgic luxury, rather than for survival, which it once was.110“The future of civilization might depend on accelerating the extinction of the fireplace.�111 Themes: Nostalgia vs. Extinction

FIREPLACE

The door contains a harmonious duality. Representing “part of a wall and an unavoidable breach in it.”68 A selfcanceling dialectic.69 The mere act of opening a door involves a sequence of at least 20 instantaneous subdecisions and calculations, each with implications for ergonomics and safety.70 Its components include: pivot, panel, knocker, bell, latches and knobs, lock and key. As a door increases in scale its importance grows from the typical threshold to a rite of passage.71 Rite of passage, in varying cultures, the door becomes a mediator giving it symbolic charge as a “site of beginnings and endings, passages through but never back.72 Another example, of the door as mediator, can be seen as a device used in sitcoms associated with moments of surprise, close calls, homecoming, and intrusion.73 Carl Jung eloquently describes a dream as a small hidden door allowing entry to the deepest intimate thoughts of the ego a place the conscious ego would never reach on its own.74 Expanding on the door to the city gates, it is “the interruption of the line distinguishing inside and outside.” This brings up the door as part of a fortress, one of deception. Bur Hochosterwitz’s fourteen door security, was a series of death contraptions to ward off conquerors in 1571. A modern method of deception can be found in the secret door fueled by paranoia.75 When doors go missing the importance shifts from boundary to flow.76 Torrential flow is the logic of the revolving door, a door which also is “always closed.”77 The automatization of the door has rendered our relationship with it detached, expected, lacking spontaneity.

Themes: Inside vs. Outside, Solid vs. Void, Open vs.

Closed, Boundary vs. Flow, Unexpected vs. Expected

DOOR

The stair highlights the idiocy of architects who see it as an afterthought. To begin to understand the stair one truth to take hold of is that foot and step are dependent on each other. As well as, there being a constant comparison which lies between the straight and spiral stair. Eccentricities of the stair explore the unexpected, the peculiar from what strays from the norm in our lives: grand stair, egress stair, etc.114 Themes: Static vs. Dynamic, Linear vs. Fluid

STAIR

The balcony, seen as an addition, weaves to the outside but floats above it.95 Unlike its impure forms (veranda, terrace, loggia, street in the air, viewing platform, and vertigo), it is cellular and isolated, yet by design it pushes beyond the individual compartment.96 According to Viollet-Le-Duc the origin of the balcony is “military: its ambiguous status as connected yet detached reflects the need both to shield oneself but also potentially access enemies for attack.”97 A platform for dictatorships (ex: Hitler’s love for mass spectacle98), the crowd can easily overturn their set spatial and social relationship with the balcony. Once a symbol of their overbearing government, now transformed from “a stage of power to one of resistance.”99 Not only does the balcony have center stage in politics, but also in literature, the famous balcony scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, “so intimately tied to an element of architecture.”100 As straightforward the balcony may seem, it contains an element of suspense within it, its inner workings are mostly hidden with the exception of it malfunctioning.101 Themes: Connected vs. Floating, Inside vs. Outside, Stage vs. Rendezvous, Hidden vs. Exposed, Spectacle vs. Subtly

BALCONY

The ramp is an instrument of arrival, an announcement.

It directs the “view skywards, leaving unknown at the end of the road.”126 A subset of the ramp, the access ramp is negatively seen, reminding us of “gravity and friction”127 but has potential to overcome limitations by providing creative solutions. The pain of the ramp continues with the addition of requirements for comfort, health, and safety, all of which exponentially reduce its steepness, and increase its footprint,”128 making it unpopular for architects and developers as it increases the horizontal space needed, cutting into square footage. The preferred ratio is 1:12 to 1:20 (checked every 5 years).129 Like the stair, the ramp is subject to architectural after thought.

Themes: Burden vs. Arrival, Horizontal vs. Vertical, Friction vs. Creativity

RAMP

The corridor, a key component in architecture results from the “combination of a wall and a roof.”102 In the 20th century the open plan reigns, forcing the corridor to retreat.103 The corridor is a void sustained by safety devices (exit signs, motion sensors, fire sprinklers, etc.) as the building grows bigger, the number and complexity of corridors grows in conjunction.104 Contemporary architecture has stripped the corridor to our worst fears as a “lonely, blank, interminable passage.”105 As an instrument of quick transition to a device of egress, the corridor “adapts to the higher demands of contemporary risk society.”106 Banished from architecture with the open plan, corridors are still everywhere: “paths of trains, planes and cars, they are the territory through which today’s global economy is sustained.”107 The types include: corridio, egress, ingress, staggered, aligned, land, aisle, enfilade, gallery, arcade, avenue, alley, and highway.108 Themes: Path vs. Egress, Inside vs. Outside, Local vs.

Global

CORRIDOR

The facade is one of the few remaining elements that has not been forgotten by architects.90 The outer surface of the solid mass populated by thin layers of modular panels, and intricate application of stages in the built process.91 The facade classically is driven by “orderliness, composition, faciality, orientation, profile, embellishment, signification, and rigidity.”92 Over time this search for order ultimately “transforms the facade into a seamless and perfect sealed wrapper.” Monolithic, simple, uniform, pure, the facade becomes all about composition. Its humble beginning from the Classical era disappears into the high performing facade, driven by economic and political forces.93 Differing approaches of the facade include: more (bombardment, ex: 1936 Coat Sale, Copenhagen), less (ex: all glass Apple Store), reflective (reflective surfaces scorching ability), absorbent (energy producing facades), narrative (classic architecture where the facade illustrates a story), abstract (form-based), original (classical architecture), copy (mimicry, frankensteined architecture), mass (ex: Great Pyramids of Giza), lightweight (ex: Pyramid entrance at the Louvre), face (literal face ex: Harvard Lampoon Building), faceless (uniform, ordered facade, ex: curtain wall), craft (trade-specific) and machine (machine made, possibility of value-engineering).94 Themes: More vs. Less, Reflective vs. Absorbent, Narrative vs. Abstract, Original vs. Copy, Heavy vs. Lightweight, Literal vs. Abstract, Hand-made vs. Machine-made

FACADE

Ah, the toilet, the ultimate element, “the great unspoken driver behind much architecture and planning.”112 A mini space for retreat, self-reflection, where one can be most vulnerable and truly let their guard down. The most intimate one can be between humans and architecture.113 It can also become political, if one reflects on the issues of transgender individuals and their relationship with the toilet. Their one space of reflection, peace becomes grounds for discomfort, alienation, stripped of the one comfort where societal norms should fade away. Today, the toilet is “the site of cultural superimpositions, philanthropy, and habits that only seem to be intractable.”114 Themes: Retreat vs. Discomfort, Intimacy.

TOILET

Escalator by design represents “an assault on the stair’s basic logic.”115 Designed not only to change the potential of the stair, but to take its place “as a car replaced the horse carriage.”116 Since it fails to eliminate the stair, it “achieves a separate life, as separate elements, with its own semiotics, its own typology, its own architectural destiny.”117 Born from the industrial age, as well as science fiction of the 1800s, engineers were attracted to the “’movable ramp’ as much for its aesthetic allure as for its practical applications.”118 The escalator’s original whimsical personality consumed its inventors with the allure of curved or spiral belts. In contrast, the modern escalator remains linear. The radical experimentation with escalators today involves an appropriation of a new scale.119 Themes: Straight vs. Curved, Stair vs. Escalator, Original vs. New Scale

ESCALATOR

SURFACE

IV

Now let us take into account the elemental process of architecture as described by Semper. The four elements include the mound, hearth, frame, and cladding, each essential to the construction process: the mound as the starting point, the ground; the hearth, the first sign of inhabitance; the frame associated to joinery, the skeletal system; and lastly, cladding, the enclosure of the entire built form.130 Interestingly, the further along the elemental stage, there is incrementally more heat required to produce the necessary products to execute said stage. In addition, everything created at each stage can be retraced back to the mound, an example of which can be illustrated in the Great Chicago Fire. In 1871, Chicago experienced a devastating fire which burned

MOUND

HEARTH

from October 8 to October 10, 1871, and destroyed thousands of buildings, killing around 300 and causing an estimated $200 million in damages. Despite the fire’s devastation, much of Chicago’s physical infrastructure, including its transportation systems, remained intact.

Reconstruction efforts began quickly and spurred great economic development as well as population growth.

Architects began to lay out the foundation for a modern city, experimenting with new ways to build.131 The fire paved the way for new construction changing Chicago’s appeal from a usual city’s, which is seen for its antiquity.

Chicago became a jewel for innovation featuring the world’s first skyscrapers. Chicago’s geology aided in building higher.

FRAME

CLADDING

below?

what’s

We all know Chicago’s flat topography (typically varying 50 ft) is paired with its logical grid. The surface is pretty straightforward, but what lies beneath? Let us begin with the geology of Chicago. Metropolitan Chicago is referred to as the Chicago Lake Plain, characterized as “relatively flat, glacio-lacustrine deposit formed by the slow moving waters of glacial Lake Chicago,� since Chicago was originally part of the lake, below sea level.

The uppermost bedrock consists of Silurian-Devonian dolomite, limestone and shale. Below that lay Ordovician rocks which are composed of predominately limestone and dolomite, and a bit of sandstone and shale. Next layer underground is Cambrian rocks, which are also primarily composed of sandstone and include three of the most heavily used aquifers in the area. All these layers in the entire area is underlain by Precambrian granitic rocks at depths ranging from about 1,000 feet below land surface in the northern part of the basin to about 7,000 feet in the southeastern part.132 This last layer was what made Chicago able to build taller.

1.

Silurian - Devonian dolomite + limestone+ shale

2.

Ordovician dolomite + limestone+ shale

Cambrian sandstone + aquifiers

4.

Precambrian granite

1.

2.

3.

4.

3.

Six tunnels below Chicago’s surface populate the levels of earth, which even locals are oblivious to. The knowledge of the tunnels range from known to unknown, depending on the depth of the tunnel. The most known tunnels are the CTA tunnels (subway tunnels which below the loop) and water tunnels.

The unknown tunnels include the abandoned freight train tunnels (40 feet below the surface), cable car tunnels (60 feet below ground), and the TARP (350 feet below ground, built to reroute flooding).

In between the known and unknown lives the Pedway, a pedestrian way created to brave Chicago’s winter. The system’s distinctive black and gold compass logo mark the entryways of skyscrapers downtown, though most may not know what it is for. It is characterized by its maze-like, disorienting series of semipublic hallways, connecting basements of more than 50 loop buildings and growing. These include City Hall, Millennium Park, shopping centers, and even hypermodern buildings like the Aqua Tower. Its program is more than just a sidewalk alternate you can also “get your hair cut, get a clock fixed, grab coffee, shop for a blender or order new license plates.” The pedway also is owned by other government entities, while still others are privately owned and controlled by the management of whatever building they pass underneath.133 This may be why the signage under each building has its own graphic style associated to it, rather than having a designated graphic for the entire system.

The pedway became the site of interest for its existence in the inbetween. Between the known and unknown.

Disorienting yet useful, it exhibits the double at play for the pedestrian. Since the pedway itself is primarily used by locals, it was the perfect place for an interruption. As said before an interruption works within the fabric around it, nothing like a spectacle, which yearns for our attention.

There is a saying in New York that says, you can spot a

tourist if they look up. In the opposite case, how do you spot a local? They habituate to their environment as it is routine, stuck on their phones or in a train of thought, just getting from point A to point B, numb to the inbetween.

This pathway offers potential for an intervention for these individuals to reach awareness. To see that there is more than what meets the eye, appreciating the beauty of detail, a subtle awakening.

V SITE

Amanda Scotese, owner of Chicago Detours, a firm that offers walking tours of the Pedway, created an extensive map of the path. She carefully researched the map and illustrated its disconnected pathways, as well as outlined potential Pedway extensions. After studying the arena through the map and on-site, Amanda designated an area of a potential Pedway extension, which also happened to be located in an area in the Loop where all the tunnels overlap. The site, in particular, is an empty pit surrounded by buildings, construction and traffic located between E. Lake St and E. South St on N. Stetson Ave.

+ 4 2

1

6

3 5

7 8 9

10 11 12

13

15

17 18

14

16

+

+

+

Unmarked entrance via stairs behind Hyatt sign.

Escalator connects hotel lobby and Pedway.

wacker

This area was left undeveloped as old train tracks for 40+ years until 1967.

24

2

1

3

The empty pit here will likely include a pedway connector in the future.

Hannah’s Bretzel Organic Sandwiches!

7

state

stetson

10

michigan

Water Street Station connects with Pedway.

12

lake Step outside for a less than a block to connect to these portions of the Pedway.

15

14

16

randolph

The entire block covers train tracks below.

1

1 Illinois Center

2

Hyatt Regency Chicago

3

Hyatt Regency

4

Columbus Plaza

5

303 E Wacker

6

Swissotel

7

2 Illinois Center

8

Park Millenium Condomium

9

Aqua Tower

11

Peek out the door here to see Lower Columbus and the city’s multiple layers.

4 6

3 5

south water

This area in particular is the most complex section of the Pedway, as both the levels of the Pedway and the ground level outside change. Underneath your feet are more layers: electrical wires, skyscraper caissons, sewage, tunnels, abandoned freight train tunnels, abandoned cable car tunnels, and the TARP (deep tunnel). In addition it provided an opportunity for a future Pedway connector, located in an area left undeveloped, an empty pit between Lake, Stetson and South Water. The dimensions of elevation changes within the site add a multitude of intrigue— various moments of roadways, basements, and suspensions.

8

columbus

9

13

17 18

Interesting bridge here.

10

Boulevard Towers

11

Lakeshore Atheletic Club

12

Michigan Plaza

13

Fairmore Hotel

14

150 N. Michigan

15

Doral Plaza

16

1 Prudential Plaza

17

Aon Center

18

300 E. Randolph

To understand the context around the site, we have to first understand Chicago’s history.

Unlike most cities, it has built an empire of innovative towers rather than buildings known for their antiquity. The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 changed the course of Chicago architecture.

It destroyed 3.3 square miles of primarily wooden structures, leaving 100,000 people homeless, returning the city back to its roots, the mound—restarting Semper’s construction process once more. This offered Chicago the opportunity to rebuild and rebuild they did.134 As seen the ground in Chicago is one that gave birth to a city unlike any another. The diagram adjacent showcases buildings near the site as well as notable architecture in the Loop.

For the most part, the buildings lack in antique styles, mostly modern. Thus, setting the norm of Chicago’s architecture and the site to modern.

On-site, the pit, an overlooked zone, at first glance a potential construction site, undeveloped, keen with opportunity. There is an air of risk and abandonment on-site even though it is exposed to levels above.

When thinking of possible interventions the following formal opportunities came to mind:

Proposed Pedway extension, crosses efficiently from within a building to suspending over the site connecting to the adjacent building.

Void introduced in the ground as a method of adding, or rather, subtracting from a construction site.

Light well in the building complex across, to engage the pedway in a new way

Tower introduction to penetrate all levels

VI INTERRUPTION

signage/elevator button

recessed entry

DISPLACED

An essential element within our built environment, the elevator can take us to new destinations. This portion of the intervention is located adjacent to the site, as a sightseeing stop, recessed slightly into the wall. The proposed elevator is typical of any elevator that can be found in the area, but instead of moving up and down, it moves diagonally. In relation to the inverted building’s observation deck, located at the lowest point in the void, the elevator buttons work just as a normal elevator does, but to work with the new orientation, higher the level, the lower the individual goes into the void.

Once the observation deck is reached, they work their way out of the doorway to the extended deck, detailed just as the stairs are, with a grate system and semi-translucent material. Light cascades down the opening, hitting window, stair and set back details, questioning this light well due to orientation. Instead of looking down to a finality, the ground, one now looks up to the endless sky, a boundless threshold.

PATH

As stated previously, unlike other pedestrian systems, the pedway is owned by multiple private sectors, particularly the buildings above each section. Each building, designed uniquely, also has its own graphic style used throughout the complex. From on-site analysis, when entering a new section of the pedway, it is typical to enter a double door vestibule into a new graphic language, abruptly emphasizing the change in arena. Each unique graphic identity thus imposes itself upon the system.

Back to our site, the undeveloped pit in the Loop is capital for a direct pedway extension, connecting paths from N Stetson Ave below the Lakeshore Athletic Club to office buildings by Michigan Ave.

concrete

truss

concrete

reveal

light fixture

reveal

As a transition space between two graphically inclined identitiesa mirrored passage is introduced to the original site, which plays of the existing graphic identity of the Lakeshore Athletic Club—a meandering orange band. To continue the graphic style, a variation of, was introduced to the new path. A reveal from the floor to the bottom edge of the wall, continuing across and bumping up to seamlessly outline the doorway to the outside: to the intervention. The reveal offers illumination from the outside during the day, and by night, lighting illuminates the walls and provides an inverse effect where the reveal remains dark, and the walls are lit.

This detour is an option for a passerby, not gaudy as to force the attention of a pedestrian, but rather, an option to take a chance and explore. If the designed detail door intrigues the individual to

breach the set path, they would come about the intervention, the floor would gradate from concrete to fire stair. A view of something unprecedented in this architectural context.

GROUND

Solid. Void. The ultimate formal debate. When and where to add or subtract. In this instance, subtraction seemed the best bet given the context. In a pit of undeveloped land staged as a construction setting, introducing a void in the middle would not be far from the norm. The void scaled to be building sized has a depth of 375’ to uncover the forgotten tunnels of Chicago; to expose historic Chicago, the void is detailed as a gutted inverted building, where the facade is showcased in the detailing. It hopes to offer a new perspective on architecture through an exploration in scale, path, and orientation.

An exploration in orientation is clearly seen in the section adjacent. It becomes an interruption at the urban scale.

Instead of competing as architects do by the tallest tower to stroke their egos, this inverts the building to experience what we celebrate most: the facade, within a gutted classic skyscraper form. This interruption mimics classic architecture, yet does it into the ground.

The following details were thought through to execute an interruption at the human scale, for after all, that is how it would be experienced. First, the rammed earth detailing of the void, to capture one’s curiosity from the periphery. Second, the fire stair, a mode of transit to explore. Lastly, with the tunnels exposed, which happen to unexpectedly flood offers a spontaneous instance for discovery, informing observation deck detailing.

reinforced wall w/ imprint cast

reinforced wall

Rammed earth was proposed so the void would become continuous through materiality (Earth), also a valid construction method given the drastic weather conditions in Chicago during the winter months. To add peculiarity, the rammed earth was detailed as a typical tower, starting with the loggia, moving on to its natural repetitive nature of the windows floor by floor, then on to various setbacks, until it all resolves to a point at its peak, or in this case, base.

grate system

translucent material

For access into the void, a pathway was created. Inspired by a fire stair, which offers safe passage during an unexpected happenstance, a fire. A similar detailing, a grate system and a semi-translucent slab, is taken on this stairway to remain hierarchically secondary to the rammed earth detail and offer a path to higher land in case of a flood, you might say a flood stair.

grate system

translucent material

Not only is the void form reminescent of classic architectural design, but it also exposes Chicago’s forgotten infrastructure: abandoned freight train tunnels, cable car tunnels, and the TARP. Each exposed through openings in the rammed earth facade, highlighted observation decks, offering potential for exploration.

TARP tunnel

electrical conduit

flood water

thermal plate

Since wonder cannot be sustained, the unpredictability of the tunnels through the possibility of flooding, adds another dimension to the intervention. It keeps it from becoming an expected instance to an unexpected one as the timing cannot be controlled. As the water collects the majority is rerouted through the TARP tunnel, while the remainder is heated to evaporation, floating to the surface as a cloud, creating various scales of wonder.

Through this undeveloped site, the path on the ground becomes about the edge. How it fits within its current unfinished condition as a work in progress, easy to overlook; but when details catch one’s eye, one’s curiosity would get the best of them to approach closer. Exposing the extensive detail left to discover, it reinforces the valor in wandering, never truly knowing what you will come across.

VII CONCLUSION

I

why? there is no why.

PHILIPE PETIT

but let me try...

It has been a long road of discovery. Understanding wonder, its various methods: frame, spectacle, interruption. Unraveling wonder as an interruption, on its subtle approach. Studying various precedents of wonder.

Dismantling architectural elements from what we assume to what could be. Then taking said research and applying it in a qualitative architectural study within the context of downtown Chicago’s pedway system. This study is merely one example of many. Opening the conversation to what architecture can do more so for the human scale experientially rather than what we are currently exposed to with new architectural interventions: a gaudy super structure. This book hopes to provide many other applications based on the research collected. Using the research as a catalogue for interruptions to come. There is no answer, just possibilities.

VII APPENDIX

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

II

END NOTES

1 Smith, Daniel.“Gilles Deleuze.” Stanford University. May 23, 2008. Accessed October 13, 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze.

2 Vermeir, Koen, The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry Reading

Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (New York: Springer, 2011), 147.

3 Rubenstein, Mary, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 7-8.

4 Huberman, Anthony. For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Black Cat That Isn’t

There. Saint Louis, (MO: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2009), 32.

5 Rubenstein, Mary, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 9.

6 Ibid, 128.

7 Ibid, 10.

8 Ibid, 9.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid..

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid, 8.

14 Ibid, 12.

15 Ibid, 11.

16 Ibid, 12.

17 Ibid, 15.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid, 12.

21 Ibid, 18.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid, 21.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid, 195.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid, 12.

28 Rubenstein, Mary, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 12.

29 Ibid.

30 Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, (New York: Harper, 1962), 142.

31 “Online Etymology Dictionary.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed October 13, 2015. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terror.

32 Koolhaas, Rem,“Window,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying

the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio,

2014), 24.

33 Thomas Kellein, Donald Judd: Early Work, 1955-1968, (New York: D.A.P., 2002),

Originally published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965, 1.

34 Ibid, 2.

35 Kamin, Blair, Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age, (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2010), xx.

36

37

38

39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68

69

Turan, Kenneth,“A Life in the Balance,” Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2008, Accessed October 13, 2015, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/08/entertainment/et-wire8.

Kamin, Blair, Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), xxiii.

Pinchevski, Amit, By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication, (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 2005), 11.

Ibid, 21.

Ibid, 13.

Ibid, 17.

Ibid, 71.

Ibid, 23.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Floor,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 4-5.

Ibid, 28.

Ibid, 38.

Ibid, 50.

Ibid, 51.

Ibid, 52.

Ibid, 58.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Wall,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 3.

Ibid, 14-71.

Ibid, 80.

Ibid, 45.

Ibid, 38.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Ceiling,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 30-31.

Ibid, 4.

Ibid, 106.

Ibid, 152.

Ibid, 154.

Ibid, 133.

Ibid, 114.

Ibid, 170.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Roof,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 3.

Ibid, 113.

Ibid.

Ibid, 120.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Door,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 3.

Ibid.

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102

103 104 105 106 107 108

Ibid, 9.

Ibid, 7.

Ibid, 18.

Ibid, 22-23.

Ibid, 25.

Ibid, 58-60.

Ibid, 80.

Ibid, 120.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Door,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 6.

Ibid, 10.

Ibid, 12.

Ibid, 20.

Ibid, 15-19.

Ibid, 26.

Ibid, 54.

Ibid, 64.

Ibid, 68.

Ibid.

Ibid, 113.

Ibid, 147.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Facade,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 3.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid, 8.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Balcony,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 3.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid, 82.

Ibid, 94.

Ibid, 42.

Ibid, 20.

Koolhaas, Rem,“Corridor,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio, 2014), 3.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

109 Koolhaas, Rem,“Fireplace,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying

the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio,

2014), 3.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid.

112 Koolhaas, Rem,“Toilet,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the

Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio,

2014), 3.

113 Ibid.

114 Koolhaas, Rem,“Stair,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the

Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio,

2014), 3.

115 Koolhaas, Rem,“Escalator,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying

the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio,

2014), 3.

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid.

120 Koolhaas, Rem,“Elevator,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying

the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio,

2014), 4.

121 Ibid.

122 Ibid.

123 Ibid.

124 Ibid.

125 Ibid.

126 Koolhaas, Rem,“Ramp,” in Elements [of Architecture] a Series of 15 Books Accompanying the

Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, (S.l.: Marsilio,

2014), 3.

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid.

129 Ibid.

130 Solomon, Nancy B. Architecture: Celebrating the Past, Designing the Future. New York: Visual

Reference Publications, 2008.

131 “Chicago Fire of 1871.” History.com. Accessed January 16, 2016. http://www.history.com/topics/ great-chicago-fire.

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133 “Six Tunnels Hidden under Chicago’s Loop.” Curious City: Six Sets of Tunnels under Chicago’s

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134 Upton, Emily.“The Great Chicago Fire Wasn’t Started by a Cow.”Today I Found Out. May 28,

2013. Accessed March 14, 2016. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/how-the great-chicago-fire-started/.

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