Tales of Space & Color - Madison Green

TA L E S O F SPAC E & CO LO R E N T RY FOR T H E DA LES T R AV E L L I NG F E L LO W S H I P - S U MME R 2 0 2 0

The role of color in pursuits of architecture is a turbulent tale in western culture. In his book

Chromophobia, David Batchelor composes a collection of attributes assigned to color: as primitive, superficial, subservient, inessential, other, supplementary, barbaric, infantile, cosmetic, and last but not least, a fall from grace, a corruption of what’s underneath it. It’s easy to pinpoint the aesthetic effects of this point of view in architectural history, like the pure white or pure material structures definitive of Modernism. Though even today these terms aren’t far removed from descriptions of architectural works instantly coined playful or post modern on social media for their bright or pastel hues. Even though color is perhaps the first language ever learned, the first experience ever had, it is to this day a marginalized and polarizing issue to be kept in check if to be taken seriously.

To speculate on the historical and contemporary impacts of color on architectural space and

perception, I propose a focused survey of Morocco, a locale just below the southernmost tip of Spain that has served as a crossroad of culture and color for centuries. Despite occupying a minimal role in my architectural education to this point, the region contains a rich and diverse body of architectural works can be attributed to its complex history. Beginning with the native Berber populations of antiquity, to the Islamic architecture of Muslim Arabs that followed, to the Hispano Moor’s crossing with Spanish European influence in tow, and to its later occupation by the French in the early 20th century. One of the dominant binaries drawn of color in Batchelor’s book exists between the Orient and the West, and Morocco offers a unique geographic disposition in that distinction. The country exists simultaneously as the recipient of significant influence from both sides of that binary, while essentially belonging to neither.

A possible shortlist of sites and cities to be visited includes the Hasan II Mosque in

Casablanca, the Jardin Majorelle and Bahia Palace in Marrakesh, the Bou Inania Madrasa and Bab Mansour Gate in Meknes, the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez, the Mohammed V Mausoleum in Rabat, the red sand structures of Ouarzazate, and the brightly hued Chefchaouen. This final city is of particular interest due to its over arching and elusive blueness, perhaps due to an influx of Jewish people to the area in WWII, or for the color’s cooling properties, its reminiscence to the color of sky or water, or simply to deter pesky mosquitoes. Today color is what most attracts tourists to the city, and has elicited larger policy to extend and maintain its captivating and Instagramable blueness. That city among the many other sites listed speak to an intricate role color has in both shaping and projecting reality, a role that I’ve investigated throughout my studio work and intend to study further.

T R AV E L P R O P O S AL 2

U RB A N DE L ICACIE S

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FULLY S AT UR AT E D

U N CO M M ON CO R R IDO R

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A LM OST B LAC K A ND W HI T E

A RC H I V E A DDITIO N

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IM P UR E LY G R E YS CAL E

I N T E RACT IVE ARTIFACTS

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M ON OC H R OM E

I DY L L I C F I GU R E S

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S OFT LY N E UT R A L

CO N T I N U E D INQ U IR IE S P OLYC H R OM E

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U RBAN DE L ICACIE S F U L LY S AT U R AT E D

Urban Delicacies is a market for the sale, production, and research of

fermented goods that interrogates a dull, regressive, or decayed notion of the aging process. Locally sourced urban artifacts compose the formal massing, and are ordered according to their inherent geometric qualities rather than an overarching orthogonal system, allowing a more deliberate and varied promenade that muddles the object and frame binary. Fermentation is one of the oldest and most widespread methods of food preservation and production, and offers the most compelling avenues for innovation in the culinary industry today, for developing unseen flavor profiles, and hybridizing microorganisms and climate, complicating previous definitions of authenticity. Overgrowth is used as a material translation of the fermentation process to the scale of a building, as biotic factors affecting the way in which a substance ages. Vegetation embodies sensory qualities of fermentation techniques, and is further estranged through color and growth pattern to oscillate between natural and synthetic. The market asks for an inversion to a perception of aging, as an agent responsible for the most valued delicacies we know today, that crosses cultural boundaries and exemplifies the growth, progress, and complexity accumulated over time.

Andrew Saunders 502 Urban Relief & Marketplace Studio Manayunk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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U R BAN D E L I CAC I E S 6

Material Studies & Cutaway Axonometric describing estranged plant growth and its interaction with volume and program.

Representationally the images studying how saturation influences materiality and artificiality.

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Extended View & Vignettes indicating the relationship between color and material, and the potential for human interaction with these conditions volumetrically

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U N CO MMO N CO R R IDO R A LMO ST BL AC K AND W HI T E

Uncommon Corridor derives its name from its unusual attitude towards

corridor space. Often housing projects along the Lower East Side of New York seek to minimize the space between vertical circulation and unit entries to maximize sellable space, often resulting in unlit, closed, and minimally occupied space left between that is necessarily used by residents daily. This project instead looks to make traditionally overlooked space a place to delight, as an unobstructed pathway terminating by glazing and public space in either direction, capitalize on continuity with the urban context. This interest in fostering community through unexpected space is maintained in the vertical unit relationships, that compose a variety of multi height balconies. Light is used as the primariy communicator of atmosphere, oscillating between cool and warm as ephemeral, candescent between natural exterior artificial inteior light.

Hina Jamelle 602 Innovative Reuse & Urban Housing Studio Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York

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Level 5 Unit Plan & Studio Unit Interior

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Sections expressing the vertical relationship between units, that step along the exterior to compose a variety of multi height balcony conditions, acting as private yet communal space.

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Roof Terrace with composed view to the city

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Main Lobby as seen through the original Sunshine Theater facade

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A RC HIVE ADDITIO N I MP U R E LY GR AY S CAL E

Archive Addition, itself and artifact concealed from public engagement,

must be rediscovered, excavated from the restricted access passages it resides to display the forgotten objects it contains, and to reveal the invisible intricacies of its function to the public. The project uses experiential devices of reveal and conceal as the primary driver for this liberation. Reinterpreting the restricted access hallway, the maze like offsets that organize the archive in plan are always curved, obscuring a full legibility of space from a viewer’s single vantage point. It instead offers an invitation to meander, resisting a flattened climactic image in favor of oscillating moments only activated by the movement through.

Daniel Markiewicz 501 Studio - Penn Museum Extension University City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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Worms Eye Isometric illustrating the euclidean geometries used to compose curving space

AR C H I V E AD D I T I O N 20

Interior Vignette alluding to space beyond the frame of view

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Entry Floor Plan suggesting a variety of programatic experiences housed in ceaslessly curving space, to be meandered through across multiple underground levels

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Unrolled Section cut figurally through the main entry and unfurled as diagrammed to articulate a processional sequence, backdropped by each of the three undulating facades of the Penn Museum

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I N T E RACTIVE ARTIFACTS MO NO C HR O ME

Interactive Artifacts is a preliminary physical fabrication exercise in

rethinking the way artifacts are traditionally displayed and engaged with. The project is composed of a series of frames, whose form negotiates between the 5 foot wide and 3 foot tall volume of a Cairo tile, the arcs present in the vessels geometry, rotational mechanics, and several composed views around and throughout the project. The exterior frames are static and surround the two nested cores that rotate independently, offering a constantly changing set of experiences from every vantage point. Three 3D printed vessels are placed in different positions, two stationary in an interior frame and an exterior frame, and one dynamically in the innermost rotating core. String is used to clad the frames with a variable density and serves to confound the spatial definition of the chamber, sometimes aligning to the volume of each frame and at other moments jumping across these boundaries to form another spatial definition that operates outside the logic and composition of the original frame.

Daniel Markiewicz 501 Studio - Sequential Chamber with Hayden Wu and Abdullah Alhasafi

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I DYL L IC FIGUR E S S O F T LY NE U T R AL

Idyllic Figures proposes a new soil analysis and crop hybridization facility

that investigates the use of interlock as an estrangement technique, that when implemented across ground, material, surface, line, and volume, seeks to operate outside digital tropes and confound the boundaries between these conditions.

Implied geometric articulations of separate parts suggest an unfixed disposition, that at some points match seamlessly and at other moments are misfit to create a difficult interlocked whole. A similar logic is applied to materiality, subtlety distorting familiar subtle textures so the overlap of these two systems of interlock creates a hybridized materiality, where textures at times smear across an implied division of parts. At the site scale ground serves to displace inside and outside conditions by enhancing the interiority of non centralized points of the site, and enhancing the exterior qualities of the center most point of the building.

Nate Hume and Gabriel Esquivel T4T Lab - Texas A&M University with Finn Rotana, Ray Gonzalez, and Lauren Miller

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Oblique Elevation & Section articulating the programatic potential of misfit figuration.

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CO N TINU E D INQ U IR IE S P O LYC H R O ME

Continued Inquiries contains works made specifically within the Visual

Studies sequence, an integral complement to the curriculum as a testing ground to interrogate ideas of representation, drawing, rendering, material, and form creation outside the confines of studio. Investigations in and between these veins of thought have significantly enriched my own architectural interests and technique proficiency, and manifested a more intentional graphic and conceptual slant to my work both inside and out of studio. The following studies then are fast and loose experiments, little probes that through their brevity have left me an appreciation and appetitie for brief unfettered speculaltion, that maintains its influence on my work at Penn, and ongoing.

Nate Hume, Kutan Ayata, and Brian DeLuna - Visual Studies sequence

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Euclidean Analysis of an artifact housed within the Penn Museum, a Catawba Jar from South Carolina

V I S UAL ST U D I E S 36

Plan & Section Amalgamations of the Palace of Rituals in Tbilisi, Georgia and the aforementioned artifact

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Fused Plan of the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravena, and James Stirling’s Museo North Rhine

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Ensemble using seams, offsets, and material to articulate ambiguous potentials between plausible parts and wholes.

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Something I read that struck me over this winter break was an account of Greta Gerwig presenting the award for Director of the Year to Quentin Tarrantino at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. An excerpt of her speech follows: “Quentin Tarantino makes movies as if movies could save the world. Movies can kill Hitler, free slaves, and give a Sharon Tate one more summer. But even more than the plots of his films, he makes movies like movies themselves matter. Like they are both high art, which they are, and that they are populist art, which they are. They’re speaking the most profound truths to the biggest crowds with the bravado that comes with the confidence that collectively everyone will be changed for the better by the experience. His movies are for everyone, the best biggest, brightest, deepest part of everyone.”

In replacing the words “movie” and “film” with “architecture” and “building”, her sentiment captures my highest hope for what an architectural work, or really any cultural act, can be. A labor worthy of the highest care that tells impactful stories of and for architects, critics, and lay people alike. The contents of this book hope to speculate on the tales architecture can tell through its many mediums, including but certainly not limited to, Space & Color.

A BO U T T H E T I T L E & COV E R