ADP:002 Convalescence

ADP:002

Convalescence

Christopher Allen Weaver

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ADP:002

Convalescence

Christopher Allen Weaver Spring 2014 - Spring 2015

In the spring of 2014 I made the decision not to apply for thesis that Fall as I traditionally should have.

My initial intention at that point was to attempt to pursue another degree in a different discipline. The ensuing work exhibited here is my journey from the point of nearly forsaking architecture to rediscovering the passion that it once ignited in me. The projects shown all served to educate me on the diverse ways in which I could find happiness as a designer, and for that I will always be grateful to the professors that helped steer me away from almost giving up on what is truly my greatest passion. Thank you all.

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INDEX 6

The Urban Conga

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Furniture Workshop

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Thoughts, Deliberations, and Representations

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Latin American Architecture

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Urban Acupuncture

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Japanese Architecture

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TheU r b a n

Conga

Dr. Vikas Mehta Spring 2014

Under the guidance of Dr. Vikhas Mehta, a small group of students arranged an independent study collaborating with the brainchild of recent SACD graduates Ryan Swanson and Mark Perrett, The Urban Conga. Their initiative seeks to activate public spaces through the notion of play, bringing people together within their community in an effort to stimulate a greater awareness of and connectivity with the surrounding urban fabric.

The core project that we worked involved hanging hand-painted swings in unused public spaces. The effort was met with difficulties as the legality of the activity was questionable, and we were asked to remove the swings in some occasions; however, despite the struggles, we had the opportunity of witnessing first hand the joy they brought.

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1.1. Hanging Swings Under I-275 Overpass (above and opposite)

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Fur niture

Wo r k s h o p

Mike LeMieux Summer 2014

Serving as an opportunity to further explore the craft of making in a one-to-one scale, the furniture design workshop under shop guru Mike LeMieux presented students with the task of designing and building a piece of furniture frequently tackled by architects: a chair.

The piece presented here is a stool, revolving around the notion of storytelling, seeking to provide a variety of levels of connectivity with the audience. The stool can be rotated onto its nose, changing its height, and bringing the speaker closer to the ground level in the case of a closely knit group. The formal aspects of the design were derived from an attempt to create an elegant composition of the space between these two positions, with the sweeping curves responding to the contours of the body and the movement involved in rotating the stool onto its front.

The stool was crafted out of a single board of walnut with the grain of the wood carrying through the dovetail joint. The legs were fabricated from water-jet cut steel and welded together with internal connections hiding all hardware.

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2.1. Storytelling Stool — Upright Position

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2.2. Stool Details (above and opposite)

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2.3. Storytelling Stool —Rotational Sequence

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T D R

Thoughts, Deliberations, and Representations

Prof. Stan Russell Fall 2014

Architects and the field of architecture have been influenced and inspired by different branches of thought and ways of thinking. Philosophical writings can often seem intimidating and unapporachable to architects and students of architecture wishing to make a foray into that sphere. The meaning of origianl texts without a thorough understanding of their contexts and precedents can be illusive and introductions to these works seldom refer to any significance regarding architecture and design.

This course sought to introduce us to a select group of prominent thinkers, whose wotk has had or is beginning to have significant impact on the way that architects and designers approach their work. The readings will address a myriad of issues including: gender and subjectivity, common-sense order and virtuality, and quality of experience and abstraction. Upon reading these works we grappled with the subsequent thoughts and ideas in a forum of deliberations and representations, the latter of which are displayed in the following pages.

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Phantasmagoria - Deleuze and Guattari TDR

Prof. Stan Russell

Fall 2014

Phantasmagoria is a sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in a dream and was an exploration into a process invoking an exchange between smooth and striated modes of thought. Inspired by a line from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia discussing the notion of laying one text over another and reading the two together as one; this endeavor seeks to explore this idea through visual information rather than text and consisted of the fusion of multiple images via overlays and adjustments. The images used were taken from several disposable cameras used during an excursion to a camping and music festival over the summer preceding the course. The mentality of the trip from the onset followed a very Kleistian mode of travel, which allowed for the development of a smooth space within which the cameras captured our experience. This seemed to me to be the perfect pool of images from which to draw for the development of these images. The manipulation itself was done on an instinctual basis, solely by adjusting the blending mode and opacity of each image. Following the completion of the initial task for class, I took the project one step further: instead of creating the images by overlaying different pre-existing photos onto one another, I discovered that disposable cameras could take double exposed images if you struck them on the bottom with a sharp blow, jarring the mechanism, shooting another image. In this way another series of photos have been taken over the course of the past year. This new series I feel further explores notions of automatism, with the physical act of striking the camera interjecting a new layer of information into the images, creating some striking compositions out of the movement of the camera.

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3.1. Initial Collaged Images (above and opposite)

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3.2. Double Exposures X1505092234 (top) and X1506071130 (bottom)

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3.3. Double Exposure X1503291826

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3.4. Double Exposure X1506071430 (above) and X1505091311 (opposite)

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3.4. Y1503172010

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Anagnorisis - Goodman TDR

Prof. Stan Russell

Fall 2014

This project once again was an exploration of a process of working. For this exercise I sat with a stack of copy paper and drew simple diagrams in quick succession. The diagrams tended to consist of simple clean lines, sometimes shaken jagged in the moment, frequently being affected by the nature of my surroundings (conversations of people nearby, music playing, level of activity, etc). Over time the diagrams also began to involve words and phrases, snippets of thoughts sparked by my surroundings or brought up from within by the meditative nature of the exercise. A lot of this exercise was an attempt to discover the relationship between symbols and descriptive systems, the intrinsic information conveyed by the lines and words, and looking to develop new layers of meaning based upon a recurring use of diagrammatic motifs. This intrinsic quality of discovery is what led to naming the project anagnorisis, a phase in ancient greek tragedy during which there is a critical recognition or discovery. The typical use of this word in reference to works of drama has an added value in relation to Goodman’s writing on symbols and their use in world making, as fiction innately is. Goodman writes of a multiplicity of worlds, all of which are dependent upon words and symbols, thus through seeking to create new symbols, with time a new world would be created, one in which these symbols hold the meaning to all understanding.

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3.6. Diagrammatic-Symbol Studies

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X1504270109 - Merleau-Ponty TDR

Prof. Stan Russell

Fall 2014

Merleau-Ponty’s writing discussed the subject of perception and phenomenology, yet in comparing it to the writing of Pallasmaa which discussed the hegemony of the eye, the ocularcentric nature of our current society, the thought occurred that Merleau-Ponty is merely propagating this state.

Thus, this project to explore how sound could affect perception, and created a patchwork of songs mixed to explore a variety of auditory experiences. Once again, this exercise began a process through which many iterations were made even long after the class finished, the final, most developed, version can be accessed via the QR code below.

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The Beginner’s Mind - Shunryu Suzuki TDR

Prof. Stan Russell

Fall 2014

The final reading of the course was an excerpt from Zen Mind: Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. We were not given the task of representing this reading, we merely discussed it in class, however incidentally, several weeks before we did the reading, I had embarked on my first experiment with painting, and had felt a fitting title to it would be The Beginner’s Mind inspired by the words being scribbled on the cover of my sketchbook after being told to look into the book at some point.

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Latin American Architecture

Prof. JosuĂŠ Robles Caraballo Fall 2014

Inspired by an impactful experience taking a similar course during his own education, Professor JosuĂŠ Robles Caraballo brought back this long lost course in an effort to enlighten students on the diverse and talented array of architects working in the Latin American subcontinent. Stepping beyond architecture, the course correlated the works within each country with an overview of the culture present, displaying its expression through music and art and highlighting critical conditions within each locale that have in turn influenced practice of architecture.

For the course project, students were asked to design an annex for Casa Kalif by Alberto Kalach.

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Anexo de Casa Kalif

Latin American Architecture Prof. Josué Robles Caraballo Fall 2014

Casa Kalif by Alberto Kalach lies atop the crest of a large hill thirty minutes north of San Diego along the Pacific coast, a testament to the landscape, terracing across the sloping terrain opening up to views of the ocean. Kalach’s design is a sumptuous residence that provides the owners with everything they could desire out of a house, thus it has been assumed that the family is in need of a guest suite since the Mother-In-Law, or the couple already in residence, feels the need for privacy and separation from the main house. Therefore, this project was situated on its own, hidden by the slope from the main house, anchoring itself into the landscape through a series of tracks for glazed sliding doors that frame the landscape through their extension.

Containing a single bedroom, a comfortable kitchen, an outdoor dining and living space, and a small altar space, the in-law suite embraces the landscape through formal and operable means.

The sliding doors allow for the entire suite to be opened up to the fresh ocean breeze and a deck space that extends along the length of the tracks and projects out over the landscape pulling the guest towards the water. A kink in the plan opens up a slot through which the guests can seamlessly enter, arriving in a transitory space that bleeds into the kitchen and external dining and living spaces (which are defined from one another by shifts in the materiality of the floor). Passing through the kitchen the path compresses becoming more defined as it slightly slopes downward towards a garden space enclosed within the threshold of the building, yet inaccessible to the guest, which provides an end to the corridor. While gazing through to the minute garden, a door on the left leads into the solitary bedroom.

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4.1. Site Mapping Study & Existing House — photos by Yoshihiro Koitani

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1.1. Working Drawing

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4.2. Working Drawing

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4.3. Site Plan

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4.4. Floor Plan

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4.5. Longitudinal Section

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4.6. West Elevation Rendering

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Urban Acupuncture

Prof. JosuĂŠ Robles Caraballo Spring 2015

Urban acupuncture seeks to pinpoint critical zones within a city and create a dramatic change on a grand scale through the implimentation of small scale interventions within these regions. For the work done in this course students investigated a portion of Ybor City in Tampa, FL, with the primary area of focus along 19th St from 6th to 13th Ave. We were tasked with devising a program and a project that would help invigorate the area. Through our efforts it quickly became apparent that the area was already being used rather well in very typical means for an area such as this, with active coffee shops, bars, markets, and restaurants. Thus, we set out to invigorate the context with atypical modes of interaction.

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Orbis Terrarum est Speculum Ludi

Urban Acupuncture Prof. Josué Robles Caraballo Spring 2015

The world is a mirror of the game. This project was tackled by teams with the work displayed here being developed between myself and fellow student Trace Gainey. Our project sought to inspire alternative forms of interaction within the city through a nearly indecipherable game in which players could participate without even being knowledgeable of the game’s existence. The game began with a single directive: how can we make someone stop, sit, and look at a simple brick wall? From this beginning, we began to explore different areas within the city that we felt held a character of intrigue that we felt people should witness and become aware of. Our adventures led us to discover much about the area, and from this we found moments of value ranging from the solitary space of the Historic city that has graffiti on its walls in spite of the Bario’s constant vigilance, to a small inaccessible courtyard space just beyond the reach of the public, with various coffee shop corners, restaurant menus, and market mezzanines scattered in between. The game itself would be initiated through a media common to the area, a concert flyer with a diagrammatic map of the area and the spaces highlighted would be distributed throughout the area, handed out on late-nights, and left sitting inside coffee-shops, bars, and other local stores. This would serve to instigate people into taking note of their surroundings, and potentially make more people aware of the spaces around them.

For the requisite coursework, we produced these mappings, a model capturing the spirit of these interactions and their potentialities, and a detailed development of an architectural installation that seeks to achieve the primordial question of our work: how can we make some one stop, sit, and look at this wall?

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5.1. Sequential Mapping of Game

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5.2. Interstitial Moment Model

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5.3. Diagram of Local Movement (above) and Looking At The Wall (opposite)

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5.4. Detail of Fins in Model (top) and Process Drawing for Fins (bottom) and Passing Through The Alley (opposite)

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5.5. Detail of Wall Connection (top) and Detail of Wood Meeting Steel (bottom)

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5.6. Profile of Dividing Fin

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Japanese Architecture

Prof. Stan Russell Spring 2015

The contemporary Japanese built environment is a complex mixture of local, regional, and global influences and can hardly be placed in a certain category. Influences of globalization and mass media make the term “Japanese architecture” increasingly ambiguous in a contemporary context. Yet, there are still certain contributions to contemporary architectural theory and practice that have origins in Japan and are often referred to as “Japanese influence.” These contributions are most often associated with the traditional art and architecture of Japan, admired for its simplicity but also the result of a complex combination of influences.

This course introduced students to many of the factors that have contributed to the development of architecture in Japan and also introduced some of the circumstances that have made it influential around the world.

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Bicycle Cart Tea House

Japanese Architecture Prof. Stan Russell Spring 2015

The course project began with an exercise in mitate, a Japanese practice commonly applied in tea houses whereby a found object becomes the centerpiece of a design and is utilized in an atypical manner. For this exercise, I created a skin system utilizing bicycle tire tubes placed in tension. From here, we were tasked with designing a tea house that applied the system we had developed with our mitate. By finding a program that was intimately linked to bicycles, the presence of the inner tubes became justified; thus, the idea arose for a tea house that could be pulled behind a bicycle. In doing this, the architecture became liberated from a static site, and found itself subject to an evolving context that shifts with the whims of the tea-cyclist. The tire tubes weave through the entire design integrated into many of the core premises: in light of the nomadic spirit of the project, the bike tires serve in tension to provide a form of suspension, coupled with simple dampers in order to allow for a smoother transport.

The entry for the guest is laterally opposed to the entry for the host showcasing the separate paths that have brought them to this moment. The host, entering from the bike, is familiar with the entry sequence and as such has a more compressed ledge for removing their shoes; conversely, the guest, likely unfamiliar with the space, is given a slightly deeper ledge allowing a more graceful departure from everyday comfort. In this preparatory space, the guest sits facing away from the tea house, looking back at the world they’re leaving behind while they remove their shoes and hang them in a recessed slot on the interior of the side panel. Once ready, the guest will turn and be faced with tire tubes wrapping up forming an elastic threshold. Maintaining the legacy of 16th century Tea-Master Sen No Rikyu, the entry to the tea house is constricted forcing the individual to direct their attention inward, away from the distractions of contemporary

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life, as they’re posed with physical barriers that are typically nullified by our mainstream culture of commoditized comfort.

Upon conquering this obstacle, the guest is presented with the main tea space, a space that at once pushes the bounds of physical comfort yet avoids fully repelling the body responding to its needs if not its whims, the space widens with the knees and elbows, giving breath to movement. Placed in this viscerally compressed space, the only thing left for guest and host to do is to address the moment, giving birth to an intimate communion between the host and the guest, transcending the barriers of conventional social interaction. With excess space a rarity, the interior is intricately designed, the necessity of wheel wells gave rise to a low ledge that contains compartments for packing away the utensils as well as a hot plate for heating the water. In response to the element of heat, the tea house submits, opening itself up through a localized ventilation shaft that lets the space breathe. Further to account for the general warmth from the proximity of two bodies, the space is open to the heavens with only a thin screen formed by the winding tire tubes that serves both for shading and to maintain visual isolation from the outside world. Within the central space, the floor shifts from the wood paneling of the ledge, to a dense foam wrapped in linen supported on hardboard for the seating area, to a wood panel in the center of the space that recesses in response to the tools of the tea ceremony. Running horizontally on both sides through the space recessed within the structural c-channel of the aluminum frame is a length of canvas painted with a heated energy, providing both a relief from the clean rigidity of the design and a subject for contemplation while in the meditative experience of the tea ceremony. Upon completion of the tea ceremony, the tools are returned to their compartments, host and guest part going their separate ways, and the tea-house continues on its ambulatory journey.

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6.1. Working Drawing

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6.2. X1503221138 — Inspiration for Art Alcove

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6.3. Top View of Tea Space

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6.4. Interior Alcove and Stove Detail (top) and General Interior View (opposite)

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6.5. Tea Cart Plan

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6.6. Tea Cart Section

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6.7. Japanese Tea Cart

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shatter the unity of thought only to invoke the cyclic return present as the nonknown in thought

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ot ylno thguoht fo ytinu eht rettahs eht sa tneserp nruter cilcyc eht ekovni thguoht ni nwonknon

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