Sensing the Maze - GSAPP ADV Studio

sensing

the maze

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

In collaboration with Troy Lacomb, Zhida Wu, and Pei Pei Yang

LUST El Raval is a vibrant haven of eclectic life surrounded by a salubrious city of prosperity. By recuperating architectures of lust lost to history, and protecting those still present, we seek to invigorate heterogeneous and paradoxical ways of living. These cultures resist the banal, rational, sterile, and instrumental views of how life is supposed to be lived.

New typological inventions are deployed throughout El Raval to create an underground infrastructure of hedonist activity. Strategies of disorientation, transformation, and delay are implemented through the typological inventions to safeguard the episodic outpourings of lust. El Raval is a haven for lust, but lust is under attack from privatizing, regulating, and normalizing pressures.

SENSING THE MAZE El Raval is a maze of sensuous antichambers.

Heightened arousal plays on misdirecting senses to hide marginalized pockets of exuberant sexuality. Tight scale. Obscured Views. Proximity of bodies. El Raval is a space to escape collectively performed identities and descend into the shadows of pleasure.

Technologies of sound, light, and texture are appropriated from erotic venues in El Raval.

Architecture becomes the collection and composition of devices. Frequencies of pleasure send vibrations through the body. Pulses of light confuse vision and clouds of mist obscure it. Textures of overcrowded abundance make

the haptic senses prime. Instead of permanent walls, soft boundaries between shifting environments create a seductive architecture.

Our team proposes to appropriate the sensorial technologies and implement them in public and semi-public spaces, amplifying the disorientation of El Raval’s maze. Interventions nested between the winding streets of El Raval use confusion and heightened arousal to deter rational bourgeois, and create layers of protection and occlusion for the vulnerable communities that engage in eccentric forms of lust.

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Charles Vincent Thornton

Columbia GSAPP

LEFT

r ig h t

View of El Raval’s dense historic fabric is evidenced by a view of its rooftops. Photograph by author.

Urban Lighting Plan of El Raval. Source: Adjuntament de Barcelona.

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

Sensing the Maze

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EL RAVAL Urban Elements of Exposure and Retreat

STREETS OF SECLUSION These Streets are only one block long, perfect for avoiding main through-traffic of those trying to get by fast. With corners on either end, they also provide better opportunities to turn a corner and lose the authorities, a co-worker, or ex-boyfriend.

EXCESSIVE STREET LIGHTING These areas have been provided with abundant, even excessive amounts of street lighting. There are lanters, pole lights, doubled street lamps and triple street lamps. Avoid these areas if you do not wish to be seen. However, these lights could potentially be adapted, to se the mood.

SOFTSCAPES Areas that resist being cleaned by the city’s nightly force of industrial power hoses are preferred

venues

for

long

uninteruppted

nocturnal activities. Softscapes are also better for kneeling, laying down, or being on all fours.

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Charles Vincent Thornton

Columbia GSAPP

OUTSIDE

INSIDE

SIGNAGE / IMAGES

exterior display

traveling media

affirming interior character

FURNITURE / STORAGE

supervision station

exclusivity device

holding patrons

‘under the table’

enabling nudity

LIGHTING

shadowy alley vs. luminous street

singular vs. diffuse light

‘exotic’ fixtures

INFORMATION

MONEY

STATUS

SERVICE

PRODUCT

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

Sensing the Maze

TOP Catalogue of elements in the history of constructing desire in El Raval. Photographs from “Historia Y Leyenda Del Barrio Chino� by Paco Villar.

B OT TOM Diagramming the actor network and exchanges between sex workers, bouncers, taxi drivers, club promoters, and tourists in El Raval.

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10

Charles Vincent Thornton

Columbia GSAPP

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

Sensing the Maze

SEX WORKERS UNITE! People have climbed over me all my life, well,

his top. These characters come to collect on

dwelled in me. They hang their laundry from my

my roof, and women appear out of the light

tall antennas and a few times I’ve seen criminals

shafts. Those steel cabinets? They actually pop-

hurtling across my rooftops. These old parapets

open, deploying strange noises, lights, and

have been dressed up now though. The

giant balloons. What happens next? Well some

antennas have been joined by mirrored steel

women start dancing, some serving drinks,

volumes, probably battery storage holding the

and a whole group of other men and women

charges of the small PV panels on their tops.

just watching. What is going on inside the

And things continue to get stranger. A new guy

giant balloons? Well, I’ll just leave that to your

next door simply moves cars up and down all

imagination.

day to nowhere. Sometimes people climb out

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Charles Vincent Thornton

Columbia GSAPP

LEFT

R IG H T

Secret lifts are installed in the light shafts of residential buildings, providing access for sex-workers to escape from the coercive system of pimps to safe apartments.

During field work, we discovered that clients contact pimps through taxi drivers. Automated car lifts provide patron access to the rooftops apart from the pimps or residential lifts.

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

pical Parking Tower Location

ONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS

Sensing the Maze

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UBER XXX ENTRANCE Sex Workers Unite!

Access Hatch

Code Protected Hatch to Rooftop

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Charles Vincent Thornton

all The rooftops become venues for pop-up erotic parties managed by a grassroots organization of current and former sex workers who can raise funds through the lucrative business.

Columbia GSAPP

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

Sensing the Maze

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THE BALOON GOES UP Sex Workers Unite!

Light Shaft Elevators

Lift mechanisms hidden among utilities bring the women working and managing the air brothel down to safe apartments

Soft Maze

What appeares to be bed sheets hanging to dry is really a system of acoustical felt and mirrored mylar curtains

Parapet Cabinetry

Polished stainless steel cabinets line the parapets, providing fold out furniture, deployable media canopy, and inflation

Lust Baloon

Its an inflatable!

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS

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Charles Vincent Thornton

all The system of mirrored cabinets line the rootop parapets, blending in with the context, and facilitating access across the level changes. Inflatables are located at the upper most levels.

Columbia GSAPP

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

Sensing the Maze

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SEX ON TOP Sex Workers Unite!

Upper Deck Cabinet

Upper deck cabinets provide storage and fan mechanisms for inflatable private rooms. The bases are storage for clothes

Parapet Cabinet

Equipment, and utilities are stored in the cabinet base The face opens upwards to create a canopy, and intimate seating unfolds from inside

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS

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Charles Vincent Thornton

all The infrastructural cabinets provide storage for clothes, canopies to hide activity, inflatable structures, and portable mood setting equipment such as speakers and lights.

Columbia GSAPP

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

Sensing the Maze

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EVERYTHING IS PORTABLE Sex Workers Unite!

Roll Out Mylar Canopy

Ladder to Other Roofs

Ladder

Upper Parapet Cabinet

Upper deck cabinets provide storage and fan mechanisms for inflatable private rooms. The bases are storage for clothes

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS

Inflatable Air Supply

Fold-Out Seating

Clothes Storage

Speakers

Mattress

Lights

Short Term Use Beds

Lower Deck Cabinet

Equipment, and utilities are stored in the cabinet base The face opens upwards to create a canopy, and intimate seating unfolds from inside

Disco LED Lights

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Charles Vincent Thornton

Columbia GSAPP

Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna

Sensing the Maze

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