Deep Exteriors by Don Klumker

DEEP EXTERIORS A PROJECT / FOLIO

DONALD KLUMKER

DEEP EXTERIORS A PROJECT / FOLIO

DONALD KLUMKER

PROJECT

September 2018 - It fascinates me that through most of human history there were no glass windows, operable doors, or roofs, yet there is evidence of social hierarchy. We are accustomed to the economics of privacy being achieved through a rigid, impenetrable envelope, restricting undesirable elements while simultaneously permitting others. For sunlight, fresh air, family and friends the envelop is penetrated; for the public-at-large, pollutants and vermin, it restricts. The acquisition of privacy imparts upon the protagonist a structural power whose vulnerability is marked by the level of eficiency of this performance, and whose value is ascribed accordingly.

Stepping through ancient Peru alerts this contemporary condition, and provokes questions about how order was achieved without the envelope. Had the human subject in pre-Columbian Peru evaporated under an authority to such a degree that the object had no consequence? Had docility formed through ideological ixation, the object being only an aesthetic accessory? Or was it the opposite, was space and time bent by way of the object aesthetic? Did this conception of space and time structurally arrange the hierarchy of preColombian society into a twisted new natural order of coercion. Did the mass-object, give rise to the mass-subject in search of common sense to this day?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COMPOSITES

DRAWINGS

VIGNETTES

MODELS

56-57 96-103

12

22

58

66

79

81

83

86

95

98

31

33

58-63

66

67

78

79

80

82

94

HAND

6

9-16

23

25

27

29

DIGITAL

94

DIGITAL

68-71

PLASTER

84

86-92

35 MM

2

4

18

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

32

38-57

72

96

98-105

68-71

74

77

84

86-92

GRASSHOPPER

80

82

94

PROCESSING

56

57

DIGITAL

SCRIPTS

65

8

PAPER

PHOTOGRAPHS

37

3

COPY

DRAWINGS

35

DRAW The pencil drawing is used less to inscribe observations into the body through hand gestures, and more as an ordering devise that frees ideas from context, and reduce the magniicent into a series obvious, but perhaps nearly overlooked, principles. In this way, a rather crude freehand or simple straight edge are tools which initiate a intentional departure from the whole for the sake of investigation.

8

HORIZON TURN Pencil on sketch pad

9

ANIMATE WALLING Pencil on sketch paper

10

DEVIANCE Pencil, ink on sketch paper

11

PERSPECTIVE Close proximity to high walls, forces an upward look. The pure geometry of crisp wall-lines, can be read against the backdrop of the sky. This legibility produces a cognitive projection, likely skewed, of the ground condition that cannot be seen through opaque barriers.

Constructed perspective drawings emulate this mapping and form the basis of this work.

PARALLEL AFFECT Pencil,ink on trace

12

CONTROL POINT Pencil on trace

13

COVER Pencil,ink on trace

14

MASS SYNTHESIS Pencil on paper

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

OBJECTS Pairs of objects were chosen from photographs as subjects of concentration. The objects include: (1) two separate segments of the same masonry wallmassing positioned at the base of the Huaca El Brujo archeological site of the Moche culture; (2) a series of buttressed walls of the pre-Inca Chimú civilization at Chan Chan; (3) and a painted wall pattern found more deeply within the Huaca El Brujo site also at the Lady of Cao burial location.

HUACA EL BRUJO 1 Pencil, ink on trace

22

23

HUACA EL BRUJO 2 Pencil, ink on trace

24

25

CHAN CHAN 1 Pencil, ink on trace

26

27

CHAN CHAN 2 Pencil on trace

28

29

LADY OF CAO BURIAL SITE 1 Pencil, ink on trace

30

31

LADY OF CAO BURIAL SITE 2 Pencil, ink on trace

32

33

MEDIA TEST 1 Pencil, ink on trace with digital overlay

34

MEDIA TEST 2 Pencil, ink on trace with digital overlay

36

38

UNDERCOVER PARQUE KENNEDY / MIRA FLORES / LIMA

JULY 2018 39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

EDIFICIO DIAGONAL vs BUILDING NEXT DOOR Processing Digital Collage

56

57

RESOLUTION The drafted plan views of each of the six drawings were re-projected through paraline drawings using digital technology to enable a more rapid testing of representational style.

The chosen style attempts to establish clarity and desire of the objects’ layered and contorted angles through an opaque pharmaceutical color tonality.

Again, the composition of the cropped-frame is clearly a critical design element, originating from both the artiicial frame of the photograph and the artiicial position of the photographer.

HUACA EL BRUJO 1 Digital

58

HUACA EL BRUJO 2 Digital

59

Chan Chan 1 Digital

60

Chan Chan 2 Digital

61

LADY OF CAO BURIAL SITE 1 Digital

62

LADY OF CAO BURIAL SITE 2 Digital

63

24 CONDITIONS Digital

65

TRIALS The exercise of making prototype models revealed the need for a simple few rules to produce coherent 3-D objects informed by the pre-Inca subjects of study. For example, it was clear that tapered planar conditions should be followed, and twisting or bending should be avoided.

Also, it was clear that the inal prototypes for this project needed to be liberated from the formal bias of the 6” cubed boundingbox, a constraint imposed by the studio.

EARLY MANEUVERS Digital

66

+

+

=

67

PROTOTYPE A Paper Model

68

69

PROTOTYPE B Paper Model

70

71

72

73

META-ORDERING Digital

78

OPTIMIZATION These drawings depict a inal cropping-operation, atop the prior cropping performed by way of photography and drawing. An artiicial, irregular trapeze shape was chosen as the cropping shape, representing the non-orthogonal character of the Huaca ritual site. The number of vertices of each of the 76 explored geometries was evaluated and organized into a table, listed according to vertex count.

79

PLAN LOGIC Digital

80

PLAN What follows is an experiment into Stan Allen’s evolving notion of ield-conditions. The goal here was to propagate an entire species of objects.

This again draws from the existence of over 500 pre-Inca Huaca ritual sites throughout Peru. Each Huaca is unique, yet as an aggregate, they form a total identity, advertising through architecture, serious cultural momentum.

A sole, eight-point polygon, was selected to run the experiment from the listing of 76 ordered thumbnails. Any could have been chosen, this was selected for its normalcy within the sample set.

From this specimen, one vertex was established as a pivot-point from which an aperture incrementally widens. The connected points and lines also adjust accordingly, resulting in the variants depicted in this drawing. The objects outline, not only the igure of the form, but also, the shape of the void it creates, establishing a precondition of a speciic exterior language.

81

82

SECTION The simple plan contains a hidden dynamic geometry revealed by sectional decisions, where to leave a platform, how far to extrude and so. Here a loom of lines connect points identiied in the plane.

Each variant is organized, by plan, into a division of thirds establishing a datum across them all.

The decision to maintain pure division of thirds, was intentional to stabilize the objects away from any implied bias towards ground or gravity which a more dynamic proportion may imply. The exaggerated visualization provides an unexpected result, instead of intensifying surface qualities, it softens them, reducing differences between them, and aligning their similarities.

83

84

85

REMAINS The objects are drastic and distinct in physical form.

The numerous iterations of cropping and reduction are evident. The banding of thirds is the referent datum between the objects. Remains of the form-work pouring-spout, and undesirable student ingerprints, provide evidence for both the making process and the haptic urge to touch, perhaps the fate of all remains.

ADVANCED PROTOTYPE A Plaster Model

86

87

ADVANCED PROTOTYPE B Plaster Model

88

89

ADVANCED PROTOTYPE C Plaster Model

90

91

92

93

94

AUTOPSY Each model type was evaluated by incrementally cutting through four different positions of each. This was done to portray the free-object as a three-dimensional igure without orientational bias.

However, if a construction plane is hypothetically applied to an imagined “top” of each view, then the incremental incisions become plan cuts, providing insight into the geometry hidden within. They could just as easily be sectional cuts depending on the chosen point of view. This is the inal attempt, of many, to arrive at a “2.5 D” drawing for this project, a provocation offered at the onset of the studio, where dimensions are protracted beyond 2-D, and restricted below 3-D. This marks an end, of a possible many, to this project, but only the beginning of my architectural thought.

95

96

97

THE BEGINNING The massing, with banded and tapered planes, was realized without an interior, forcing an exterior. Perhaps this project yielded, in its inal stage, a monumental typology, in which the exterior repels and attracts simultaneously. Repels, through the literal occupancy of space, and attracts out of it’s ascribed, symbolic, political, performance, or affective qualities. The ield between and around objects is the subjective mesh which validates or destroys the object. Can the object alone predict the subjective outcome, or can it merely ensure that the subject is formed?

7 VIGNETTES Plaster Model, Photography

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANGELO PRIETO JR.