YES2021 - Senior Research Architecture Studio - 3/5 (Parker)

W21

REANIMATING THE PROSAIC ARCH 702 Senior Research Studio II Winter 2021 Instructor - Matthew Parker

Students: 01 Alana Kerr 02 Dustin Dodd 03 Edward Park 04 Jarrid Hrupp 05 Jason Ip Kang Shui 06 Ji Song Sun 07 John Amiel R. Rivera 08 Kayla MacDonald 09 Natalie Chung 10 Rejwana Rahman 11 Shelby Christensen 12 S S Anudeep Mummareddy 13 Vijul Shah

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Studio Introduction

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

STUDIO INTRODUCTION REANIMATING THE PROSAIC | AMBIGUITY, AMBIVALENCE AND THE CITY On Thursday October 29, 2020 the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) along with Arts Commons and the City of Calgary, held a virtual information session that outlined the upcoming procurement process to enable the selection of the project team(s) that will support the design process for the Arts Commons Transformation (ACT) project.

This information session was attended by 155 unique firms from across the globe. The project consists of two phases; phase one is the construction of the Road House – a new venue space for the resident companies as well as 200+ community groups that use the facility while renovation work is underway in Phase two. Phase two is the revitalization of the existing Resident House to increase its lifecycle as well as elevate the public’s experience through upgraded amenities and technologies. The brief also identifies Olympic Plaza as a site of future development, and states that “(t)he Design will need to consider collateral impacts of building the Road House on Olympic Plaza… the project scope does not include any planning or redevelopment of the Olympic Plaza (and) any subsequent planning for, and any work related to, the Olympic Plaza will be governed by a separate agreement.”

While this studio does not take issue with the proposed development outlined in the ACT, it is concerned with the future of Olympic Plaza and argues that Olympic Plaza is an

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overlooked and under-appreciated resource as it serves as the primary political space of the city. As such, all future developments of the buildings adjacent to Olympic Plaza should be acutely aware of the role this space plays within the city and its ability to support a civic publicness. Through an understanding the importance of Olympic Plaza, this studio will attempt to reorient the ACT as a project that supports the political agency of the plaza, re-casting the new Road House and renovated Resident House not as the cities next icon, but as a frame or limit for the activities of the Plaza.

The foundations of this argument reside in the work Pier Vittorio Aureli and his work around the problem of form making in architecture and its necessary ability to address social and cultural power structures.

In The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, “Aureli proposes that a sharpened formal consciousness in architecture is a precondition for political, cultural, and social engagement with the city. Aureli uses the term absolute not in the conventional sense of ‘pure’, but to denote something that is resolutely itself after being separated from its other. In the pursuit of the possibility of an absolute architecture, the other is the space of the city, its extensive organisation, and its government. Politics is agonism through separation and confrontation; the very condition of architectural form is to

separate and be separated. Through its act of separation and being separated, architecture reveals at once the essence of the city and the essence of itself as political form: the city as the composition of (separate) parts.”

It is through this lens that the studio seeks to develop an architectural project as the scale of the ACT and Olympic Plaza that advances an agenda of autonomy and political action within the otherwise controlled flows of urbanism and its economic power structures. Starting from the ground up, the studio will explore how ambiguity, fuzziness and ambivalence coalesce to produce a design brief that resists over-arching grand narratives and dissolves monolithic legibility, instead pursing a platform for appropriation, separateness and autonomy. This studio focuses on advanced digital modeling techniques to re-orient the author and the user’s perception of architecture’s prosaic elements (the corner, the aperture, the stair, the threshold, etc.) to reanimate their importance within a project.

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Contents

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

CONTENTS I.

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THINK WHAT YOU ARE DOING Collective Individualism

Alana Kerr, Dustin Dodd, Jarrid Hrupp, Natalie Chung

III. PERFORMING ARTS HERE? 63 Exposure Alana Kerr

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Plat Forma

71 Massive

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Autonomy In The City?!

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The Piles: Where They Fall Is Where We Stand

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City Room

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Edward Park, Kayla MacDonald, S S Anudeep Mummareddy Shelby Christensen, Jason Ip, John Amiel R. Rivera

The Urban Limit

Dustin Dodd Edward Park

Jarrid Hrupp

Ji Song Sun, Rejwana Rahman, Vijul Shah

95 ±Fifteen

EQUALLY (UN)EQUAL

103 Amorphous

Jason Ip

II. 35

Ji Song Sun

Architecture As Object, Object As Architecture

111 Unfamiliar

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Experimental Chunks

119 Subtraction

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Computation and Familiarity

127 Para-Site

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The Meaning of Form

135

Respecting The Old

43 Cyber-Relics

143

Form +++

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De-Designing (And Re-Designing) Architecture

151

Inbetween The Formal

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Familiar & Unfamiliar

159

The Associated Vessels

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Exploration Into The Uncanny

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Equally (Un)Equal

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Equally (Un)Equal

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Equally (Un)Equal

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Altering Perception through Architecture

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Architecture As Objects Invoking Emotions

Alana Kerr

Dustin Dodd Edward Park

Jarrid Hrupp Jason Ip

Ji Song Sun

John Amiel R. Rivera

John Amiel R. Rivera Kayla MacDonald Natalie Chung Rejwana Rahman

Shelby Christensen S S Anudeep Mummareddy Vijul Shah

Kayla MacDonald Natalie Chung

Rejwana Rahman

Shelby Christensen

S S Anudeep Mummareddy Vijul Shah

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

04

Think What You Are Doing

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Think What You Are Doing

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

PROJECT # 1 THINK WHAT YOU ARE DOING “(W)henever human beings come together – be it in private or socially, be it in public or politically – a space is generated that simultaneously gathers them into it and separates them from one another. Every such space has its own structure that changes over time and reveals itself… Wherever people come together, the world thrusts itself between them, and it is in this in-between space that all human affairs are conducted.”

Hannah Arendt

Increasingly studio briefs begin with statements like: We live in a time where we are reckoning with rampant racial injustice, the urgency to address climate change, the widening gap in wealth disparity, a political system where sides no longer speak the same language or have a common understanding of reality, a global pandemic that exposes a lack of resilience within neo-liberal governments, and new forms of technology that increasingly spy and control us… Perhaps the reason these types of statements are becoming so prevalent is that they resonate – we hear these statements and believe, optimistically, that we can make a difference.

It is important that we remain optimistic in the face of these conflicts, but if we truly want to start a process of meaningful change, we must first understand the systems we are working within and against. We must understand that these systems, primarily defined through their relationship to

capitalism, are built to not only consume but prosper from their uprisings, and in order to act against these systemic complications, we must first find ways to make them legible to an otherwise ambivalent audience.

With the rise of urbanism, architecture has become complicit with the systems designed to oppress and marginalize, and while not the root cause of these problems, architecture has lacked the awareness to meaningfully act as a critique to the smooth flows of capitalist growth. Within this studio critique is not something that is against but is an act that makes something otherwise ignored or invisible legible and graspable. By brining these obscured phenomena to the fore, it is the hope that individuals will encounter these systems and produce their own unique conclusions and responses to the plethora of problems that face humanity. It is this plurality of responses that this studio seeks to develop and mobilize as a form of political action within the city.

active and on-going project within the city of Calgary. The studio starts with a rigorous investigation of Olympic Plaza and an analysis that explores its role as the primary political space of the city, arguing that any design intervention immediately adjacent to Olympic Plaza must engage the space as the important locale for free and equal dialogue between citizens. Framing the discussion through the work laid out by Aureli in the first chapter of The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, and a related condensed literature review, students will develop an attitude to the question – what it means to act politically and how does architecture operate as a critique within the systems that structure its relationship(s) to the city?

Hannah Arendt claims that solitary action leads to a withdrawal from the world and causes one to think of man in the singular, but it is only through our ability to act as a plurality (act in our absolute distinctness from one another) that we can join together to act politically and succeed in changing the world.

It through this lens that this studio will tackle the Arts Commons Transformation (ACT), an

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Aerial view

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Collective Individualism

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Collective Individualism

COLLECTIVE INDIVIDUALISM Alana Kerr, Dustin Dodd, Jarrid Hrupp, Natalie Chung Within the urbanised city is the Arts Commons Transformation, which aims is to make art more accessible and diverse, in turn bringing people together. However, the proposed design reinforces the institutionalism of the current Arts Commons; there is still a distinct boundary of included and excluded. This intention of “openness” reads as a chain link fence, where there is a clear delineation between inside and outside.

In response to this, we propose to create a plaza that reduces the perception of art as an institutional construct by having it function as a political space that embraces diversity. Our proposal questions the relationships between city to site, site to individual, and individual to individual by intentionally framing these relationships alongside each other using the cultural political space of Olympic Plaza and Arts Commons.

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zcQOQk8C0xo

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Collective Individualism

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Winter visualization

Concept diagrams

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Collective Individualism

Arts Commons Transformation Critique

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Olmypic Plaza winter render with platform and +15 intervention

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Plat Forma

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Plat Forma

PLAT FORMA Edward Park, Kayla MacDonald, S S Anudeep Mummareddy The project proposes a new intervention and critical stance to the Arts Commons Transformation (ACT). Through the lens of Aureli, the project challenges the prevalence of the +15 circulation network and the prioritization of the iconic through the use of confrontation, limits, and thresholds. Here we question who does the +15 truly serve and what does this mean to the public spaces it overshadows?

The intention of the project is to utilize the concept of the icon as a method of counterpositioning the +15 in relation to the public ground plane of Olympic Plaza. Mimicking the self-absorbed performance of the iconic building through a parametric shell, the utilitarian mobility corridor reflects the primary focus of the city on the working class.

Link to Video https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Z2JNib6xfMM

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Plat Forma

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Plaza Section - Limits and Threshold

Connections and Edges

+15 Section

Site Plan

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Plat Forma

Aerial View

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Aerial View

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Autonomy in the City?!

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Autonomy in the City?!

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

AUTONOMY IN THE CITY?!

Shelby Christensen, Jason Ip, John Amiel R. Rivera As architects, we often succumb to the utopian vision of urbanization in the form of smooth flows, seamless public and private transitions, and overall efficiency. But whether we intend to or not, our design moves are politically intentional because they are leveraged to push the ideological agenda of a client, a city, or a force.

Therefore, it is imperative to understand when political autonomy is being exercised, in order to understand when that autonomy is being exploited or undermined. Only through understanding one, can we understand what it is to live without the other. Through this kind of difference we can become absolute - that is, we are separate, and separated from everything else.

AUTONOMY, EVEN IF JUST FOR A MOMENT. Our site is Olympic Plaza, we believe it is an important civic space given its proximity to important political and cultural institutions such as City Hall and Arts Commons. The plaza currently sits as a gentrified ruin to the 1988 Olympics, being used by middle and upper class citizens when program is explicitly assigned, only to leave the space for dead after.

to be aware of their own political autonomy.

Through an ambiguous and unprogrammed plinth, our proposed architecture sits as an object of confrontation and objection, differentiating itself as a finite form in contrast to the totalitarian capitalist growth of the rest of the city. The plinth and the programed grided landscape are to allow for a plurality of activities to happen on the site.

Our intervention allows for opportunities to navigate the plinth’s edge and allows for the edge to be programmed as individuals see fit. It also situates users on a reflective surface temporarily taking them out of the planned and prescribed context of urban Calgary.

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aZE7oFIrnsM

The plinth is rotated 3 degrees counterclockwise orienting to true north.

The slightly skewed plinth brings attention to the existing grid that we inhabit, but don’t always acknowledge. This rotation causes a noticeable disruption to the sidewalk, directly confronting us to THINK WHAT WE ARE DOING once we begin to separate from the whole.

We are proposing a place where individuals could become agents of change by placing themselves in the heart of the city. An environment that could confront individuals

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Autonomy in the City?!

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Separation from the whole

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Plinth edge conditions

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Autonomy in the City?!

Aerial view

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Aerial view

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The Urban Limit

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

The Urban Limit

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

THE URBAN LIMIT

RE-IMAGINING THE CITY OF CALGARY THROUGH OLYMPIC PLAZA Ji Song Sun, Rejwana Rahman, Vijul Shah

Capitalism seems to be not only the viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it. Capitalism has taken over the modern cities and influenced the critical factors that build a city like economics, politics, and urbanism. Urbanization can be looked at as an embodiment of Capitalism. It has made the economic space to become the fundamental source of existence.

Urbanization destorys any limit, boundary or form that is not infinite. It creates a totalizing mechanism of compulsive repetition of typical entities, that form a realm, devoid of any individual identity and expressions.

series of a study diagrams exploring ways of creating a definite geometrical composition with the designated plaza boundaries.

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=jUREGeFkg-s

The essence of a Modren architecture would be to recognize whether its limits are a product of economic exploitation or whether they are the pattern of an ideological will to separation within the endless urban space of the city. Architecture needs to paint a finite picture, somethig which we can grasp and use; accept or reject.

Looking at the Olympic Plaza as an important political space in the city, the architectural response may be non-functional, nonnarrative, non-justifiable. By creating finite forms such as a circle within the boundaries of the plaza, a conscious awareness can be created by temporarily escaping from the cityscape. These are a

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

The Urban Limit

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

I. Downtown Calgary (the focus area)

II. Downtown Calgary within the broader infinite urbanization

III. The Siloed

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

The Urban Limit

Compositional Studies

Form Studies

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

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Equally (un)Equal

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Equally (un)Equal

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

PROJECT # 2 EQUALLY (UN)EQUAL Indifferent architecture is defined through “refusals, denials, and post designations through an acceptance of nondesign: the banal, generic, and unoriginal; the weak; the antidramatic; obscure referents, citations, and mashups; entropy, chance, and indeterminacy; ambiguity between fact and fiction; the cheap and commonplace; play with mediums; and a focus on architecture’s representation of itself, as opposed to realism... (A)t its best, architecture, like art, operates politically through aesthetics, not direct engagement… The artistic expression of no expression, of calculated indifference, is not necessarily the avoidance of or giving in to extremist politics. Instead, when done well, architecture’s calculated ambiguity - its indifference - is a social engine to produce discussion, reflection, thought, and even action, while allowing for the coexistence of an irresolvable diversity of ideas and identities” Michael Meredith “Ambivalence is more cunning in the composition of form and locates issues of reception between a subjective pre-existing familiarity with identifiable qualities and its potential gestalt, or reading as something other, as a spatial and cultural project.

Ambivalence frustrates the recognition of something by appearing as two or more things at once, while indifference cares equally little for replica as it does for novelty.

(T)he notion that estrangement is a

qualitative effect, rather than an action; an artist cannot deploy “techniques of estrangement.” Clark Thenhaus “Estrangement may be the desired result, but there is no recipe to guarantee success. All one can do is acknowledge estrangement when it happens and try to describe the qualities around its emergence… is Defamiliarization can be taught, it is medium specific, and it involves a deep understanding of the codes and conventions that have built a medium into its contemporary condition. A defamiliarized artwork can lead to an aesthetics of estrangement…” Michael Young A close reading of Rem Koolhaas’ City of the Captive Globe brings to fore architecture’s formal autonomy and its restrictive relationship to the underlying urban strictures that dictates architecture’s participation with the city. This critical project speaks to a condition of pluralism and an architecture where criticality is marginalized, and “style” dominates. Put simply, pluralism arises out of a condition of no criticism, which is itself a symptom of theory’s persistent failure to articulate and negotiate architecture’s role vis-à-vis structures of oppression. Within this condition the discipline lacks a coherent critical framework to grapple with the discipline’s political and aesthetic urgencies.

In the absence of a critical framework, the

urban produces culture through a subtle logic of banality where everything is equally good or equally bad, and consequently, nothing is (nor can be) at stake. Architectural critiques of pluralism commonly take the form of narratives constructed against the apparatus of neoliberal power; or aesthetic expressions that claims alliance with political discourse but makes little meaningful commitment to change. The result of these critiques is often more novelty, more spectacle, more icons… more of the same. In an attempt to make this conditions legible, this phase asks students to accept the structures that govern the contemporary city, and puts forward a indifference, ambivalence and estrangement as techniques to explore architecture’s possibilities within a system where everything is equally (un)important.

This Project engages the nuances and the baggage associated with the terms indifference, ambivalence and estrangement to understand how said terms reorient traditional narratives and discourse around architecture and the city. By removing context and focusing on the prosaic elements of architecture each student developed a formal vocabulary that challenged the limits and scales of a “public” architecture.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Architecture as Object, Object as Architecture

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

estrangement

ambivalence

indifference

estrangement

ambivalence

b

b

b

indifference

EXTERIOR AXO

EXTERIOR AXO

EXTERIOR AXO

a

a

a

indifference

estrangement

ambivalence

PLAN

PLAN

PLAN

indifference

estrangement

ambivalence

SECTION A

SECTION A

SECTION A

indifference

estrangement

ambivalence

SECTION B

SECTION B

SECTION B

INTERIOR AXO

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Indifference

INTERIOR AXO

Estrangement

INTERIOR AXO

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Architecture as Object, Object as Architecture

ARCHITECTURE AS OBJECT, OBJECT AS ARCHITECTURE Alana Kerr

Using the motif of the arch as a way to frame division and definition of threshold of space, different methods of articulating these thresholds were explored using the following term understandings: Indifference Intentionally incomplete. Explored through developing an understanding of an incomplete arch Estrangement Different from what it once was without becoming foreign. Explored through inversion of typical definitions

Render birds (Indifference)

Ambivalence Undefined, threshold of definition obscured.

Explored through creased / smooth boundaries.

In the renders, birds were used to convey scale rather than people, because they are less immediately relateable than a scale figure. This was to further obscure the line between object and architecture. Out of proportion trees were also used to further this effect.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Experimental Chunks

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Experimental Chunks

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

EXPERIMENTAL CHUNKS Dustin Dodd

The experimental chunks phase worked as a study in revealing the futility of producing form within the bounds of terminology that is problematic when associated with the production of architectural artifacts.

Indifference, ambivalence and estrangement are terms that create an imperceptible translation for architectural form, but in an attempt to produce constraints and sudo definitions, a result is produced that brings a new rationale into the realm of production.

Within this study prosaic elements of architectural objects are at the center of these new definitions and act as the catalyst for alternative applications. Each Definition is explained in this context below.

Estrangement definition and methodology - An estranged approach to architectural production rejects the common applications of prosaic components and instead actively produces forms that challenge the longstanding application of such elements.

The following chunk examples are the result of this attempt to create formal production within the constraints of the problematic definitions.

Alternative material study for ambivalence chunk.

Indifference definition and methodology - An approach to producing architectural indifference understands a components intended use, and actively deploys those components with a specific disregard to The common practices that those components function within.

Ambivalence definition and methodology - An ambivalent approach to architectural generation internalizes the standard application of prosaic elements within a building and then externalizes an array of Contradictory deployments that produce a juxtaposition of Conditions that produce tension in the formal resolution.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Computation and Familiarity

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Computation and Familiarity

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

COMPUTATION AND FAMILIARITY Edward Park

Three different computational techniques led to the development of three methodologies surrounding the words indifference, estrangement and ambivalence.

Indifference through the use of physics simulations to randomly position non-descript objects around a space, this idea of messy ‘piles’ begins to create an attitude of indifference towards the architecture that contains it. The success of the operation is achieved through the removal of expression and individuality of each object, of aspects such as the material, colour, or programmatic use. Disregarding the individual parts in order to create the whole composition allows for a fuzziness between aesthetics and use.

Estrangement The removal of the familiar that creates a strangeness by appending objects until the use or aesthetic of the original is ambiguous or could be mistaken for something else. A new set of readings departs from the original object resulting in a fuzziness that is both replusive yet attractive.

Ambivalence An architectural ambivalence is achieved in the situation where one design driver acts as the familiar, and another driver acts as the contestant to create opposition within a compositional whole. The base architecture is confronted with the carving objects to create the interface between drivers.

Diagram of computational exploration

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

The Meaning of Form

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

The Meaning of Form

THE MEANING OF FORM Jarrid Hrupp

Indifference | Divergent Unity Indifference can be thought as two opposing elements being joined together. When designing for indifference, the designer becomes disinterested with harmonious geometries and adjacencies. The desire is not to blur the edges of difference, but to highlight them Estrangement | Cultivated Tension Estrangement is to create a separation between elements that would otherwise be connected. Tension is created by removing the physical or perceived connection between these elements to emphasize their junctions and adjacencies.

Ambivalence | Blurred Opposition Ambivalence is the act of combining the function of two opposing elements and obscuring them to create a state of uncertainty. The designer must take what was legible and make it indeterminable.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Cyber-relics

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Cyber-relics

CYBER-RELICS Jason Ip

In each architectural method proposed was a playfulness between the exterior and interior environment. Each relic is an accumulation of closed and open spaces connected by a circulation system unique to each methodology.

Indifference was an appropriation and misuse of architectural object. Using scaffolding as a method of circulation, the temporary beams and catwalks now become an affixed element of form.

Estrangement manifested itself in the tension between two neighbouring masses. The corners of the buildings seem to touch, but not really. There is a space between them that repels at the same time that it attracts.

Ambivalence was a purposeful misreading, where elements of one building bleed into the next. For example, does the staircase belong to the built environment or the ground? Elements in this chunk are deliberately shared among spaces and buildings where they wouldn’t usually be shared before.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

De-Designing (and Re-Designing) Architecture

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

De-Designing (and Re-Designing) Architecture

DE-DESIGNING (AND RE-DESIGNING) ARCHITECTURE Ji Song Sun

Developed from the idea of de-designing and re-designing architecture, three different strategies were explored: Indifferent architecture refers to the design or aesthetics of a building/built entity that does not depend on the surrounding context (the environment) or the physical/ sensual characteristics of the built form (the architecture). The architecture of indifference begins from the blank and through a complete detachment from the existing conditions.

Estranged architecture refers to a design/ object/thing/built entity that shifts in its aesthetics according to the changes in perception (our senses and sensibilities).

The architecture of estrangement begins by re-analyzing the existing design, object, entity, or etc. and re-create it through unconventional ways of understanding it.

Ambivalent architecture refers to a design/ object/thing/built entity that is determined by the point of views and/or perspectives (stances and interpretations). The architecture of ambivalence begins by visualizing and acknowledging numerous possibilities of the design, object, entity that may result from its unclearness, indecisiveness, and equivocalness.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Familiar & Unfamiliar

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Familiar & Unfamiliar

FAMILIAR & UNFAMILIAR John Amiel R. Rivera

My definitions of Indifference, Ambivalence and Estrangement although different, falls under an overarching theme of familiar and unfamiliar thus all chunks follow the same form.

Buildings because of their ubiquity causes familiarity. Its really a journey that has been travelled over and over again, and the chunks are an opportunity to not only re-discover that journey but its more about that moment of pause between the recognition of the object and the realization of its true nature.

I was curious about the idea of shrinking the architecture down to product scale, disassembling and unrolling its parts revealing their familiar form. The floor, walls, roof and windows have their own material association and is often defined by their placement within the object itself. But what happens when we start randomly slicing these parts, start shifting their material properties, and then put it back together the way it was supposed to?

This idea is starting to create an object or an environment that sits between the familiar and the unfamiliar. As we go through this journey of re-discovering this new object, we slowly start to realize parts of it that might seem familiar, but not quite.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Exploration into the Uncanny

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Ambivalence

Estrangement

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Exploration into the Uncanny

EXPLORATION INTO THE UNCANNY Kayla MacDonald

Exploration into the Uncanny explores the potential of architecture to exhibit attitudes of indifference, ambivalence, and estrangement within the systems of the contemporary city.

The first term is indifference. For the purpose of this exploration indifference was defined as “individual insignificance in the face of overwhelming indifference.” Based on the Lovecraftian concept of cosmic indifference, this architecture aims to create architecture that is indifferent to the scale of humans.

The second term is Ambivalence. This attitude was described as “the pull of two opposing forces that represent duality and contradiction”. This architecture uses the form of the arch and reflection to play with the idea of complete and incomplete forms as a method of representing duality.

The final term is Estrangement. This attitude is defined as “a sense of unease and disconnection with the once familiar.” This architecture aims to take space that was once familiar and alter it in a subtle and uncanny way.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Equally (Un)Equal

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Equally (Un)Equal

EQUALLY (UN)EQUAL I Natalie Chung

The idea of indifference, estrangement, and ambivalence can be perceived differently by different individuals. To understand the three terms, different formal techniques were represented.

Indifference is represented through the materiality, specifically concrete and its staining from weather conditions. By having done so, the material is able to take on physical properties that can not be determined over time.

Estrangement utilizes the idea of parasitic forms on the design making it seem foreign.

A structural technique takes over the original form making it look unknown.

Ambivalence is represented through utilizing hard materiality by making it look soft.

Having curves throughout the material will create the illusion that the dense material is able to be easily manipulated.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Equally (Un)Equal

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Equally (Un)Equal

EQUALLY (UN)EQUAL II Rejwana Rahman

Exploration of words through architectural chunks. How architecture can arouses different types of emotions through formal independence.

Indifference: Indifference architecture where the architecture is intangible, free from any bindings or guides. Where its independent, following or neglecting references from others. Where it does not have a character but following a generic rule. Where the architecture operates just based on aesthetics, opposing realism or context.

Parti diagram

Estrangement: where several objects composed in a way which represents something completely different than the original experience. Producing a new set of aesthetics for the architectural object.

Creating tension in realism, to create unfamiliarity, in regular objects or scenario.

The experience not limited to positive or negative, but simply dissimilar.

Ambivalence: Somewhere in between Taking the decision of being ‘indecisive’.

It does not defined geometry, It is irregular, & contextually indifference. No defined geometry, irregular, contextual indifference, elevational ambivalence (same as indifference but soft geometry).

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Equally (Un)Equal

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Equally (Un)Equal

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

EQUALLY (UN)EQUAL III Shelby Christensen

Architecture is explored here through three approaches and techniques towards creating form, along with three different drawing and representation styles.

First is coinciding with the ideas of: Indifference, which is an ambiguity between fact and fiction, using found materials and ready mades to performance in new ways.

In all of the drawings the exterior and interiors are indifferent to each other and self contained. The mezzanine hovers above with no connection to the exterior walls. The use of renaissance architectural elements is playful, and ironic and the object or “chuck” itself is placed on the ground with no foundational connections, separating itself from the context.

or objects doing more than one thing.

The objects choosen for this are quite banal and ordinary in and of themselves but start to have and create larger and different conversations based on the surrounding objects. The placing of these objects starts to create spacing through techniques of sorting aggregations. Relational aesthetics are revealed in order to collect and interpret connections between objects both at the scale of the individual objects and the aggregation as a whole.

Overall these forms alter and intensify an aesthetic relationship between things but not necessarily revealing a deeper or more essential truth.

Forms of estrangement was interested in the defamiliarization of an architecture. By this it is meant to not reveal the true essence of the object. By using texture mapping as the main driver, spaces beyond the architecture are eluded to. Adding to the allure, and strangeness of what the image actually is.

The drawings all take on a life of their own.

The transition and experience from outside to inside are made different through these tensions.

The next form is driven by the idea of ambivalence, which is interested in an object

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Altering Perception Through Architecture

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Altering Perception Through Architecture

ALTERING PERCEPTION THROUGH ARCHITECTURE S S Anudeep Mummareddy

The possibility of a nuanced architecture is explored through the translation of the terms indifference, estrangement and ambivalence into prosaic elements that are acontextual.

Indifference: The architecture explores the interior which is independent of the exterior, the larger control layer. Using poche technique to augment the volume on the interior to create immersive and curated experiences, the implied volumes produce confrontation through counter-positioning.

Estrangement: The defamiliarization of regular semi-circular arch, places emphasis on the cognitive perception of the space.

By morphing the techtonic composition of simpler architectural elements, the chunk is articulated to construct and disrupt cohesive experiences and subjecthoods.

Parti diagram

Ambivalence: The overlap of architectural forms as two layers of spaces that interact with a sandwich logic. The spatial stacks of layers when juxtaposed have a simultaneous yet contradicting attitudes that create really undecided and ambivalent spaces.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Architecture as Objects Invoking Emotions

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Indifference

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Estrangement

Ambivalence

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Architecture as Objects Invoking Emotions

ARCHITECTURE AS OBJECTS INVOKING EMOTIONS Vijul Shah

Using the idea of how Architecture invokes emotions in its interpreter’s mind, three different strategies were explored using formal autonomy.

Indifference: A wall is a familiar object, used to join the floor and the ceiling. But what if it doesn not do that? The form explores an idea when a wall is used as a space creating mechanism. It willingly detaches from the floor and the ceiling, creating multiple planes of spatial geometries. These geometries can tehn be explored to create internal as well as external spaces. The form exerts an emotion of a weird, random object.

Parti diagram

Estrangement: A wall is used to enclose spaces. But what if the wall is stacked together to create un-enclosed spaces? The form tries to use a Wall as a compositional elements, collecting and deforming it to create un-familiarity. The overall composition made of walls completely eludes from its original meaning and interpretation, and invokes an emotion of strangness.

Ambivalence: A wall is usually solid, having straight edges. But what if it expands and becomes something else. The form is ambivalent to a regular and an abstract geometry. It translates into dumb, a-frontal form as it moves from one end to other.

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Performing Arts Here?

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Performing Arts Here?

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

PROJECT # 3 PERFORMING ARTS HERE? “One thing is certain: architecture will become ever more itself while at the same time becoming everything other than what architecture is today. The discipline of architecture is ramifying. There are, and will be, many architectures – alas, not of equal value. Some will be short-lived; some will persist longer. We are witnessing the demise of the belief in singular, dominating ideologies, as well as a loss of confidence in the teleology of technological improvement.”

Jesse Reiser & Nanako Umemoto The primary task of architecture is to articulate and define space for activities to occur. Within this paradigm the timing seems right to question our relationships to current and future environments, as well as to each other. This studio argues that architecture is in need of a discourse that foregrounds reorientation more so than a singular graphic or formal exercise. This is not to say shape and aesthetics are not important, but there is too much at stake for architecture to not be thinking about techniques and strategies that might reorient architecture and it’s users to the assumptions that facilitated the contemporary condition, a condition confronted by the immanent threats of a post-truth political landscape, climate change, wealth inequality, and systemic racial injustice.

In this Project, students explored the freedom(s) that might come from architecture’s reorientation, freedoms where architectural pursuits are fuzzy and diverse, indifferent and ambivalent, estranged and unfamiliar. The Arts Commons Transformation (ACT) will serve as a medium for synthesizing your critical reading of the city and architecture’s ability to produce new worlds through its formal production, towards a reorientation of our perspectives, lifestyles and goals, to better tackle the pressures ahead. This is no small feat and responses will likely need to challenge existing modes of formal (re)production and aesthetic representation. With this in mind, students were given the freedom to develop a response on their own terms, so long as the work strives to question our starting points and reorient ourselves towards a multiplicity of possible futures.

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Hidden mechanisms in design

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Exposure - Alana Kerr

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Exposure - Alana Kerr

EXPOSURE Alana Kerr

In design, we often go through great lengths to conceal the mechanisms that make things work, hiding them within beautiful exteriors and simple objects. At an urban scale, industrial processes are pushed to the fringes of the city, or are hidden away in underground conduit. In the architectural field, we hide mechanical, electrical, plumbing and infrastructural systems within walls, floors and ceilings, resulting in what appears to be a static object within which things can happen.

However, in reality, buildings are complicated machines, with systems constantly at work to make them work.

Parti model

EXPOSURE seeks to provide a new integrated site + architectural design for Calgary’s Arts Commons + Olympic Plaza. The design aims to tie together the theatre architecture with the public exterior, allowing the buildings to open and close to the site as needed. The theatres themselves stay as fully enclosed black boxes, flipping the traditional relationship of back of house being that which is hidden away to instead the performance space that is hidden, and back of house exposed. The result is a forum for public gathering, performance, and expression which embraces all that it requires to function.

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Left to right, top to bottom: 1. Concept axonometric 2. East elevation 3. West elevation 4. East-West section

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Exposure - Alana Kerr

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Exposure - Alana Kerr

Site Plan

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Exposure - Alana Kerr

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Exterior Visualization - Day

Backstage Systems

Arched Form Vignette 1

Exterior Visualization - Night

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Exposure - Alana Kerr

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Conceptual plans

Interior Visualization

Arched Form Vignette 2

Next Page: Site Axonometric

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View of sky from within an interior light-well.

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Massive - Dustin Dodd

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Massive - Dustin Dodd

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

MASSIVE Dustin Dodd

The current architectural approach is entrenched in the production of transparent buildings believing that a façade should be as invisible as possible and that the only difference about being inside as compared to outside is the ability to zealously control a climactic environment that sits within a three-degree window and within an acceptable range of humidity. The paradox of this condition is that highly transparent buildings necessitate material envelopes that are extremely thin and are the least effective at moderating temperature within.

This obsession with comfort and perceived dissolution of facades has produced a new necessity within the built environment, HVAC. This modern absolute force has been entrenched into building codes, workplace safety standards, and can become one of the primary design drivers in contemporary projects7. This has created a straitjacket for architectural design as 8 engineers and building code experts have become the final authority behind architectural form and in particular the minutia of a building within its prosaic elements.

In effect these HVAC systems and thin walled buildings have produced an increased demand for energy consumption and have been a significant source of Green House gas emissions. 10 In recent years the attempt to reverse this reality has seen an increase in new engineering solutions that are directed towards increasing the performance of the

curtain-wall façade, Although this is moving in the right direction the reality is that the root cause of trying to make a material with the wrong thermal properties act as a environmental barrier. This modified curtainwall system as solution in turn becomes a red herring as it gives the impression of environmental sustainability but continues to reinforce the thermal problem with contemporary buildings and furthers the complicit actions of architects with producing carbon form. In addition, this has further forced Experts in HVAC and curtain-wall systems into the design seat of a project, reducing the ability for a project to stand as an independent architectural project.

Through the use of a massive construction, this project aims to provide a redirection of the built form, one that embraces material properties instead of attempting to subdue them, and also a project that employs restraint towards aperture and the misnomer that comes with transparency of the more the merrier. This alternative condition does not fetishize the idea of transparency for all conditions and instead look to the production of enclosure in a more holistic sense. This project will also – quite controversially so – dismantle the acceptance of buildings primary role to produce a synthetic conditioned space that is a slave to a perceived and idealized comfort and instead embrace and even design moments of discomfort.

Axonometric of Arts Commons Transformation proposal

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Massive - Dustin Dodd

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

BURNS BUILDING

MAX BELL THEARE

MARTHA COHEN THEATRE

JACK SINGER CONCERT HALL

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ROADHOUSE THEATRE TWO

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ROADHOUSE THEATRE ONE

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ROADHOUSE THEATRE THREE

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LVL 03 - ARTS COMMONS

Modified floor plans of LVL 01, LVL 02, and LVL 03 respectively. Grey areas show existing Arts Commons program to remain unchanged within the transformation.

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Massive - Dustin Dodd

Worm-view of Arts Commons revealing the insertion of public circulation through the structure connecting with the interior light wells.

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Massive - Dustin Dodd

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Evening view of the North-west Lightwell

Insert image caption here.

Formal expression of exterior skin wrapping around program within

East and West elevations respectively.

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Massive - Dustin Dodd

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

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Site Plan of Arts Commons Transformation

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9TH AVENUE Section View (above) and North and South elevations (below) respectively.

Next Page: View of Arts Commons Transformation from Olympic Plaza.

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

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Diagram of urban scale articulation of piles

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The Piles: Where They Fall is Where We Stand - Edward Park

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

The Piles: Where They Fall is Where We Stand - Edward Park

THE PILES: WHERE THEY FALL IS WHERE WE STAND Edward Park

Beginning with the idea of the piles, the project looks to use the political nature of the pile as a new tool, as a paradigmatic shift, and a new punk rock attitude that fosters architecture’s ability to be critical towards the city.

The inefficiencies produced by the pile allows for an inbetweenness or heterogeneity that is more productive for humanist design.

It produces a disruption within systems of asymmetric power that dismantles the notions of mass production or of the readymade efficient box.

The pile, as an alternative methods of composition, creates a distance from the city’s capital-driven desires for efficiency and the icon and allows for the objects to become inaccessible by developing a type of noncomposition.

On the inside, the moments of intersection and overlap of hard body and soft body create interesting spatial qualities and allow for users to experience architecture outside of the efficient box.

The looseness and indeterminacy give breathing room to interpret and inhabit spaces as users please.

By using the attitude and methodology of the pile to create social housing in the core of downtown Calgary, the architecture is simultaneously reclaiming space for citizens and confronting the segregating practices of the city.

Diagram of indeterminate pile

There is no regard to the transition, the edge, the threshold. The only law is gravity.

Compositional physics forms a provocative figure without authoring useable space.

Playing with the slight deformations of the forms, the physics simulations, and the materials, the spaces of soft and hard continue to reinforce the idea of looseness.

The project uses piles as social housing to contradict the efficient residential tower.

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Interior renders at intersections and overlaps of piles

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The Piles: Where They Fall is Where We Stand - Edward Park

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

The Piles: Where They Fall is Where We Stand - Edward Park

Exterior render from Olympic Plaza

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Site plan and building elevation

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The Piles: Where They Fall is Where We Stand - Edward Park

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

The Piles: Where They Fall is Where We Stand - Edward Park

Building plan and building section

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Hidden mechanisms in design

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City Room - Jarrid Hrupp

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

City Room - Jarrid Hrupp

CITY ROOM Jarrid Hrupp

City room is a reorientation in how we might begin to approach the design of public architecture and how architecture can make a positive connection with the surrounding public. Rejecting vernacular methods of connection such as the plus 15 system and internally oriented architectural forms. Vehicular traffic was removed from the site of Olympic plaza that resulted in 1st street SE and MacLeod Trail to be detoured underground through a underpass between 9th Ave SE and 7th Ave SE, creating one large pedestrian zone in this new super block. The creation of hard edges comes from the link between many successful plazas around the world, where edges are a very important and dynamic aspects. These edges not only frame a space, but the walls can then begin to offer new opportunities in how the public interfaces with them. Responding to the current RFP for the Art Commons Transformation, City Room is centered around the design of the Roadhouse Theatre.

The plaza has 360-degree steps that frames the central public space where events can take place all year round. Being lower, this allows this space to be flooded in the winter to allow for skating to continue. The main building programmatic elements are the central lobby, the Roadhouse Theatre, and the Small & Large Black Box Theatres.

Challenging the concept of a glass box that gives the illusion of openness, the façade on the south face is designed to open up and connect directly with the site. Storefronts were oriented to the plaza and not placed within the plus 15 as the current RFP asks for to allow for better access and connection with the site. Using formal moves that were identified in earlier phases, ambiguity between architectural elements is done with the limited use of materials were used to blur the lines between different architectural elements. City Room acts as a way to better understand how a methodology behind architectural form creation can help shape the spaces we interact with.

Concept

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Sections

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City Room - Jarrid Hrupp

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

City Room - Jarrid Hrupp

Site Plan

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City Room - Jarrid Hrupp

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

East Interior Elevation

North Interior Elevation

Insert image caption here.

Level 01 Frontage

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City Room - Jarrid Hrupp

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Level 02 Floor Plan

Level 01 Floor Plan

Entrance

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Movement between thresholds

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±Fifteen - Jason Ip

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

±Fifteen - Jason Ip

±FIFTEEN Jason Ip

The dichotomy between the privileged and those who face disadvantages under their influence is exemplified in no better way than the pervasive plus 15 system, where enclosed walkways keep movement between office, corporate, and other private spaces efficient and direct. This system serves as a reminder that city funding is continuously pooled into keeping private spaces private, leaving the streets below robbed of action, essentially antagonizing the public realm in a tangible one to one physical relationship.

Arts Commons then, should be a space where we can question and actively oppose the capital-centric framework of the city.

A space where efficiency is not necessarily forgotten but appropriated and misused into a system that has more than capital at stake.

This system uses the infrastructure afforded to us through an elevated +15 pathway, but returns its function back to the public by exposing it to the elements and connecting to the ground on several site touchpoints.

And in prioritizing the public, the movement of the private realm is subsequently pushed underground, inverting the reading of the city.

+15 system around Arts Commons

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±Fifteen - Jason Ip

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Elevations

Site plan

Longitudinal section

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±Fifteen - Jason Ip

Circulation Axonometric

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±Fifteen - Jason Ip

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Traversing the Plus - Minus Fifteen pathway

Apertures

Under the Plus - Minus Fifteen pathway

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±Fifteen - Jason Ip

Interior

Stephen Avenue

Floorplan

Next Page: Site Overview

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ARCH 702 | Studio VI Senior Research Studio in Architecture

Studio Title Instructor | Matthew Parker

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ARCH 702 | Studio VI Senior Research Studio in Architecture

Studio Title Instructor | Matthew Parker

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

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Perspective Section

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Amorphous - Ji Song Sun

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Amorphous - Ji Song Sun

AMORPHOUS Ji Song Sun

When designing architecture, architects are most often confined by myriadds of urban restrictions and regulations. To explain the development of the architecture within the controlled environments, gestures like diagrammatical arrows are used to clarify, and justify, certain methods that lead to the final design. However, while the simple diagrams allow the viewers to easily understand the project, they also remove the opportunities of alternative design methodologies which may be more efficient and impactful than what’s present.

Form Exploration

Hence the project seeks to investigate the merits of removing the singular legibility in architecture to allow more varied and personal experiences of designing through the employment of ambivalence in the design of aesthetics and spaces.

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Designing the aboveground - (controlled portion of architecture)

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Amorphous - Ji Song Sun

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Amorphous - Ji Song Sun

Exterior Renders

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Amorphous - Ji Song Sun

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Designing the belowground - (uncontrolled portion of architecture)

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3 vs The underground is designed under amorphic condition to appear informal, irregular, unbalanced, unstructured, and unshaped. For instance, the set of arrows on the left works like a manual that indicates a certain design move at a time, which will always produce similar set of results. If take away the numbers beside and put the arrows together like in the right, then the order disappears, and design becomes much unique and personal.

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Amorphous - Ji Song Sun

Interior Renders

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Unfamiliar - John Amiel R. Rivera

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Unfamiliar - John Amiel R. Rivera

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

UNFAMILIAR John Amiel R. Rivera

Many buildings are designed and constructed to fit within its context thus result in hyperprogrammed spaces. The creation of these spaces not only results in people overfamiliarizing themselves with their surroundings but more importantly, this familiarization evokes a specific action from people resulting in the city controlling every possible outcome.

It’s the idea that familiarization doesn’t really provide for an opportunity for disruption. But how do we become familiar with something? When do we begin associating an object with how we’re supposed to use or act around it? And how can architecture reorient our relationship with the city? To me, familiarity is really a journey that

has been travelled over and over again, and this project really is an opportunity to rediscover that journey.

The first half of this journey is the redesigned Olympic plaza where it challenges the city’s controlling grid that not only rejects it but more importantly is creating an environment where people can begin to reorient their understanding of architecture’s role in the city through its unprogrammed nature. The other half is the roadhouse where the architecture offers a progressive realization of an unfamiliar object.

A place that reorients one’s understanding of the city explored through materiality and form.

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Unfamiliar - John Amiel R. Rivera

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Unfamiliar - John Amiel R. Rivera

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Unfamiliar - John Amiel R. Rivera

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PLINTH

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Unfamiliar - John Amiel R. Rivera

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

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entrance ramp reception theatre 200 theatre 300 green room dressing room backstage mens washroom womens washroom storage electrical loading / garbage

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Plaza and Front Entrance

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Subtraction - Kayla MacDonald

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Subtraction - Kayla MacDonald

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

SUBTRACTION Kayla MacDonald

Subtraction examines the role of the Arts Common Transformation and proposes an intervention that reorients architecture as a method of counter positioning itself within the contemporary condition of the city. The project aims to formulate a critique surrounding the prevalence and preference of corporate and commercial spaces over the development and maintenance of public spaces within the downtown core of Calgary.

A trend that is evident in the ACT document where the city proposes delegating a third of the public Olympic Plaza block towards the new Roadhouse Theater building.

Subtraction creates an architecture for the new Roadhouse Theater that is both reflective and critical of contemporary neoliberal tendencies within urban design.

For this Subtraction uses a methodology that estranges the Roadhouse from the general public, making it feel inaccessible to those who have no “business within the building.” The methodology uses the term estrangement to create architecture that is unfamiliar and uncanny. To achieve this the program of the building was divided into individual blocks, then stacked, rotated, and cut out of a large massing block. This created a form that uses the overlap of space to create unintended spaces, gaps, and apertures through intersection. When put together this methodology produced a form that is an agglomeration of parts into

a compressed whole, estranged from their original shape by creating an architecture that functions from the alignment of mismatched pieces.

But as the project moved forward it became clear despite the intent to create critical architecture the very form of this new structure became a representative of what could be considered “iconic” capitalist architecture. The proposed design for the Roadhouse design is superfluous, extravagant, and overly complex, preferencing aesthetics over an accessibility. Which brings to question the legibility of intent, and questioning who counter form architecture is for and ultimately what power does it have to inspire systematic change when its intent may be misunderstood by those who it. How can you create an architecture that is counter form in a way that can be understood and not taken to be another empty icon? Or is iconicity the way to trojan horse our ideals through investors, placing these moments of counterculture out in the world, regardless of how they are perceived.

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Subtraction - Kayla MacDonald

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Designated ACT Roadhouse Area + Downtown Green Spaces

Methodology Diagram

Exploded Massing Diagram

Entrance from Stephen Avenue

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Subtraction - Kayla MacDonald

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Ground Level Floorplan

West Elevation

North Elevation

Level 1 Floorplan

Level 2 Floorplan

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Subtraction - Kayla MacDonald

West Section

North Section

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Subtraction - Kayla MacDonald

Interior Second Floor Visualization

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Para-Site - Natalie Chung

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

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Para-Site - Natalie Chung

PARA-SITE Natalie Chung

There are many famous architectural works globally that are designed for audiences to enjoy. These include museums, art galleries, theaters, and historical monumental structures. However, not everyone is able to gain access to experience art and appreciate it. Architecture is used as a structural framework to create space that houses creativity, but majority of it comes with economic restrictions.

An example of this includes the Arts Commons building. Arts Commons is seen to be an economically institutionalized organization. The desire for art being for everyone to enjoy is lacking as only a certain group of audience is able to access the Arts Commons building. This leads to the exploration of the public becoming a parasite to the economically driven structure. The site then becomes the host for the appropriation of public activities.

Parti model

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Para-Site - Natalie Chung

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Building Separation

Entrance Identification

Scaffolding Location

Pillowing Skin

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Para-Site - Natalie Chung

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Figure Ground

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Para-Site - Natalie Chung

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Winter Conditions

Night Conditions

Daytime Conditions

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Para-Site - Natalie Chung

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Master Plan

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Respecting the Old - Rejwana Rahman

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Framing the Stephen avenue

Extending the programs

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Elevating the forms to allow maximum activity on the plaza

Reshaping the form to minimize the shadow on the plaza

Adding light wells to allow maximum sunlight in the form

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

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Respecting the Old - Rejwana Rahman

RESPECTING THE OLD Rejwana Rahman

Olympic plaza and Arts Common have their own strong historical significant which represents the past of Calgary. The concept of this project is to Respect the history and architecture in the site and to design a space, where history and contemporary unite.

The site which is in downtown Calgary, is surrounded by 5 out of 54 historical structures in Calgary. Today Stephen Avenue serves as one of the central spines of Calgary’s downtown core. These architectures were the starting point for that. Each of the architecture has their own strong style, making the site a hub of historical elements.

Even the choice of materials, geometries have their own reason and history behind it.

Site

Merging the plaza and Stephen avevue to create a large open polititical space for the public. Sun orientation, public activites were considered in forming the shape. one of the intentions of making the footprint small is to keep the plaza uninterrupted for the public.

The Arts Common and the new form is lifted up and not directly connected on the ground floor, but on the upper levels. This form shows how the history and contemporary is existing together equally while reflecting the city.

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Site Study_history, geometry, material

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Respecting the Old - Rejwana Rahman

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

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Respecting the Old - Rejwana Rahman

Reflective Surface to portray the city on the form

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Respecting the Old - Rejwana Rahman

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Plan at Plaza Level

Key Plan

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Respecting the Old - Rejwana Rahman

East Elevation

Section AA’

Section BB’

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Interface With The City

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Form +++ - Shelby Christensen

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Form +++ - Shelby Christensen

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

FORM +++ Shelby Christensen

What if your dirty laundry was architecture?

This project believes that craziness and whimsy can be just as productive as things with arrows and data sets. Creating an architecture of indifference allows for an ambiguity between fact and fiction, using found materials and readymades to performance in new ways.

This project proposes a point of departure, and the changing of mental space opened by the possibility of new constructions and combinations. Where the architect can be more accurately viewed as the “catalyst” and attempts to create immersive environments of its own for which to simultaneously remove from the city and move towards new worlds.

The jean acts as an indifferent form to its surroundings and folds over or hides corners of adjacent buildings. This exterior treatment creates a very different atmosphere from others presented in Calgary and sets the stage for new possibilities inside. From the inside the project is complying with Phase 2 of the Arts Commons Transformation which includes keeping three existing theaters and the addition of three new ones.

to be seen as islands or floating volumes above. These moves act to highlight the indifference of the jean by its separation, even the stairs hover above the ground.

The existing theater enclosures have been modified to represent the city and create opportunities in the spaces inbetween. extending the existing brick cladding to corners and created opportunities to add subtract services, program and circulation.

The ground floor theaters continue to have entrances on this floor. With services being housed in these new pockets of new space. Allowing for a plurality of programs inbetween for people to gather before and after shows.

Parti model

The jean extends higher than the original enclosure to encapsulate these volumes.

In parts the vaulted jean reaches down and almost touches the volumes. Making for an immersive experience in the jeans.

The jean exterior tucks under existing theaters that current sit below grade. The new additional theaters have been elevated

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Dirty Laundry In The City

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Form +++ - Shelby Christensen

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Form +++ - Shelby Christensen

Ground Floor Pre and Post Show Programming

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Form +++ - Shelby Christensen

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Highlighting Indifference

Section 1

Jean on Jean

Section 2

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Form +++ - Shelby Christensen

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Plan 1

WC

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In TheVaulted Jean

Interior Looking Up At Theatre Islands

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Inbetween the Formal - S S Anudeep Mummareddy

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Inbetween the Formal - S S Anudeep Mummareddy

INBETWEEN THE FORMAL S S Anudeep Mummareddy

By augmenting the Inbetween spaces of the Arts Common Building, to create unfamiliar spaces, that which attract or repel the nuances of the formal and political context, this architecture expresses its Indifference.

How to create unfamiliarity? Concealing the architecture within the familiar existing boundary, with minimal presence on the exterior retaining the Theatres. The inbetween spaces form distinct organic forms and cues to welcome people inside, that are carefully carved openings and entrances.

Using the poche as a technique to carve out spaces by creating unfamiliarity, blurring the walls, roofs and floors, thresholds that are similar carvings, door and window have similar spatial logic.

The immersive digital gallery model along with the existing theatres and program creates a cocoon like volume or a node that disrupts the urban flow, pedestrian commute through plus15 network. The program is flexible and liberal by accomodating a wide variety of functions and activities, giving equal importance to formal theatre spaces by retaining them and the adjacent informal gatherings, rehearsal spaces, seminar and activity halls, gallery and exhibition spaces creating a dialogue around art and culture and radically dispersing people’s voices, thoughts and art. Arts Common rather than being a hub of artist residencies and huge theatres(only for a large group to perform)

that is disconnected from the olympic plaza and street network of downtown, it is the now the Inbetween spaces or cocoon for the art to be nurtured and dispersed, an inclusive space that gives a platform to the people.

The design is a circulatory and participatory model, which is defined by the no. of curated moments inside of the space. The loosely spread galleries and activity spaces can host small talks, discussions or rehearsals.

The generous volume and poche will ensure none of the spaces are narrow/ cluttered converting them into these huge volumes or into a large canvas or a gallery for projection mapping and digital art, thus reappropriating the teritory. By visually augmenting the architecture within, story-telling and art is activating the architecture creating an immersive, inclusive and indifferent space.

Parti model

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Inbetween the Formal - S S Anudeep Mummareddy

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Experiential Renderings

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Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Inbetween the Formal - S S Anudeep Mummareddy

View from the Olympic plaza

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

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Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan +15lvl

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Inbetween the Formal - S S Anudeep Mummareddy

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Inbetween the Formal - S S Anudeep Mummareddy

Section Y-Y’

Section X-X’

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ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

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A limit among the limitless

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The Associated Vessels - Vijul Shah

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

The Associated Vessels - Vijul Shah

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

THE ASSOCIATED VESSELS Vijul Shah

It starts with a question, how should the Architecture in a critical political space like the Olympic plaza be? Should it be a part of the Capitalist Economic Urbanization or should it be a separate object, willingly trying to exclude itself from the city? In order for an Architecture to strive for separation, It needs to move away from the preconceived notions of a typical Architecture.

Looking at the conventional ways of making Architecture, it can be an instrument of culture or it can be an autonomous form. This project strives to create a place In-Between form and culture.

The project becomes an exploration of an Architecture, which acts as a vessel for an ambivalent reconciliation of Culture and Form in order to operate as a detached autonomy of an abstract formal system. It does not try to disengage from the two polarities completely, but tries to operate between them, maintaining a distance.

the Olympic plaza and the Arts Commons- a consciously controlled geometry, independent from the restrictions of the inside and outside, but carefully interacting with them through different moments. The Architecture seeks to be An-exact, it is resolved and organized from the inside while being consciously dumb and ambivalent from the outside. It is held in a resistant tension between the universally commodified culture of architecture and the contemporary languages it holds. Through its act of separation and being separated, architecture tries to reveal at once the essence of the city and the essence of itself as political form.

Parti model

Arts Commons transformation calls for Architecture which facilitates the operations of the existing Arts Commons theatres, connecting to a new facility called the “Road House”, located among the Olympic Plaza.

Looking at Olympic plaza as a critical political space in the heart of Calgary, its cultural value is its capacity to “Gather” people. The projects tries to establish Architecture as an object amidst the tension created between

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Exterior Renderings

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The Associated Vessels - Vijul Shah

ARCH 702 | Senior Research Studio II

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

The Associated Vessels - Vijul Shah

Interior Rendering - Theatre

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The Associated Vessels - Vijul Shah

Reanimating the Prosaic Instructor | Matthew Parker

Plan at 10mt level

Plan at Plaza Level

Key Plan B

B

C

A

A

Roof Plan

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The Associated Vessels - Vijul Shah

Elevation C

Section AA

Section BB

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