Abena Bonna Portfolio

A B E NA B O N NA B.A. Classical Civilization & Philosophy | Wellesley College ‘13

M.Arch I Application Portfolio

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C O NT E NT S New York/Paris Palais Garnier & Lincoln Center | Fashion Atelier

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Sticky Spaghetti | Attractor Analysis

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Snow Bird | Flocking in Maya

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Introduction to Architecture Interfatih Center on155th Street | Cultural Center

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Wellesley College Skull and Bones | Drawing

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Essay Excerpts Lefebvre, Sexual Violence & Politics of Domestic Space

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Power Within Privacy | Villa of the Mysteries

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Frank Lloyd Wright | Taliesin West & Its Petroglyphs

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PA LA I S GA R N I E R | FA S H I O N AT E L I E R I I Critics: Thomas DeMonchaux & Sarah Carpenter

NY/P Studio | GSAPP

N EW Y O R K / PA R I S

The conceptual drawing above is inspired by the diagramtic models for Lincoln Center. The exisitng material of the grand staircase in the Palais Garnier is deforming, specifically from the corners of the structure.The diagrams show the corners of the structure disapearing, reforming, and folding and refolding with circulation of the staircase in plan and section

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LEFT: The plan and elevation of the Lincoln Center diagrammatic model is implanted into the grand staircase of the Palais Garnier.

Fall 2013

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Floor plan and section diagram of the opera house’s material follows the circulation. The section diagram shows key moments of visibility in the collection of curves in certain spaces of the stairwell.

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L I N C O L N C E NT E R | FA S H I O N AT E L I E R I Critic: Eduardo Rega Calvo

NY/P Studio | GSAPP

Fall 2013

Fashion is about sensationalized moments and intense gazes. Fashinon takes those gazes and folds, unfolds, and refolds its direction towards a new space and new interaction. The selected projects work torwards creating a fashion atilier that seeks to creating a bridge between eye and body in where the two will create moments of exposure and intmacy. At the same time the atelier explores constant visibility of the human participant and the physical enviroment directing that visibilty and enhancing and public and private moments.

Compact floor plan of each level of the atelier and its circulation.

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1/8 Scale model of Lincoln Center atelier

The goals for creating the Ateleier: -blending space and programs with the passage ways that do not completely obscure vision and achieve an exploratory and inviting atelier.

- there are to be no angles, no perpendicular lines, and no planar walls.

-the strips is to allow everyone is to be seen by each other and see another.

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Lincoln Centwer circulation in the day

Lincoln Center circulation at night

Circulation of day and night together

Lincoln Center’s open plaza is a vortex that has path, program, and views blend spaces and pulls people into spaces within each building.

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ABOVE : Studies in the orientation of curves and how they create space and keep intact path in order to avoid perpendicular and angular, solid walls.

Sketch model of density with thinner strips

Sketch model of density with wider strips 14

“A fold is always a fold within a fold�

-Gilles Deleuze, The Fold

1/4 Scale diagrammatic sketch model of atelier

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To allow the programs of the Atelier to blend with circulation and be in view of each other I used curved strips that would form from and around the atelier.

Inspiration for the skectch model came from Deleuze’s The Fold, exploring the folding, unfolding, and refolding of material that forms fluid space. The model looks to the interlacement of boundaries and having that fluidity where the floor with the strips act as catalysts of spatial connectivity and social intervention.

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ST I C KY S P A G H ETT I | ATT R A CT O R A N A LY S I S Critic: Ezio Blasetti

Encoded Matter GSAPP

Spring 2014

Attractors and meta-attractors act together to manipulate the line-points. The attractors move towards the meta-attractors and leave behind a line trail. The line-points are attracted to the attractors and their direction and self-organize themselves to the attractors’ paths. This is inspired by my ideas of people walking in a space and how they converge with an attraction point in that space. At the same time, the space reacts to the line paths as if there is an invisble warping. The diagrams are variations in the number of attractors and meta-attractors while experimenting with different thresholds, scales and steps applied to the attractors.

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G: 0 A: 0 MA: 0 LP: 0 T: 0 Sc: 0

G: 50 A: 12 MA: 8 LP: 800 T: 10 Sc: .4

G: 100 A: 4 MA: 1 LP: 850 T: 20 Sc: .5

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G: 10 A: 20 MA: 4 LP: 480 T: 5 Sc: .2

G: 10 A: 8 MA: 10 LP: 480 T: 10 Sc: .2

G: 50 A: 12 MA: 4 LP: 400 T: 15 Sc: .3

G: 100 A: 16 MA: 10 LP: 450 T: 15 Sc: .3

G: 200 A: 8 MA: 2 LP: 850 T: 20 Sc: .5

G: 100 A: 12 MA: 3 LP: 850 T: 20 Sc: .5

G: 20 A: 10 MA: 5 LP: 480 T: 10 Sc: .4

G: 200 A: 18 MA: 10 LP: 450 T: 15 Sc: .5

G: 100 A: 8 MA: 10 LP: 900 T: 20 Sc: .5

Paremeters :

Attractors (A)

Meta-Attractors (MA)

Line Points (LP)

Threshold (T) Scale(S) Generations(G)

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S N OW B I R D | F L O C K I N G I N M AY A Critic: José Sanchez

Topological Study of Form | GSAPP

This project’s form was achived through careful placement of Newton and Vortex forces in Maya space creating a flocking effect.

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Spring 2014

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I N T E R F A I T H C E N T E R ON 1 5 5TH S T R E E T

I NT R O D U CT I O N T O A R C H IT E CT U R E

Critic: Christy Cheng

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Introduciton to Architecture | GSAPP

Summer 2014

Site: Church of the Intercession on 155th Street

A cultural center should be able to educate the community of its different perspectives of its collective and offer spaces that facilitate the convergence of many different spaces. 115th Street has a collection of Christian churches of different denominations but little space for people of other faiths such as Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism to converse with the Christian community. This project explores creating community and worship spaces for people of all faiths and be a learning experience that would lead to a closer community across cultures through recognizing geographical orientation and the cultural, historical, and sacred respect of an interfaith center.

RIGHT: Diagramatic Plan of the the Interfaith Center placed in Intercession’s courtyard, creating a sprouting tree.

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The converging lines are moments where religiion and community come together from the scared spaces, semi-public spaces, and formal and informal public spaces.

Sacred Space (Santuary) Sacred Space (Santuary)

St. Patrick’s Cathedral | New York City

Semi-Public Space (Chapel of the Virgin) Semi-Public Space (Chapel of the Virgin) 27

Public Space (Nave)

Semi-Public Space (Chapel for saints)

Informal Public (Vestibule) 28

Hagia Sophia | Istanbul

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Hagia Sophia following the same diagramatic rules applied to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

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Medallion for Muhammad

Mihrab pointing to Mecca

Mosaic of the Enthroned Virgin with Child

Christian High Altar

Mosaics of Archangels Gabriel and Michael

Hagia Sophia’s historical and cultural overlaps of sacred spaces between Islam and Christianity.

Medallion for Allah

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The white mass model show the large spaces created by the void space and organizing certain converging spaces and circulation.

Informal space Formal or Private space

Formal Space: Private/spiritual spaces for personal worship.

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Formal Space: Semi-private spaces for administrative use.

Informal and Formal Spaces: community spaces with more circulation paths.

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Informal Public Space Forma

Programs of th (Fron

The series of mass models work to blend public, semi-public, and sacred spaces and at the same time work effortlessly with the site, Intercession Church.

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al Public Space

Worship/Sacred Space

he Interfaith Center nt Elevation)

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Churches in Manhattan

Mosques, Synagogues and Buddhist temples in Mahanttan

KEY 155th Street

Church

Synagogue

Buddhist Temple

Mosque

Houses of worship in Manhattan : Two maps showing the proximity of houses of worship to each other and their number.

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ta ry m en Ce

Ce

m en

ta ry

Site Map of 155th Street

Churches

The center is plugged into Intercession’s courtyard.

Third floor of the Interfaith Cultural Center

Direction of Mecca

The spaces on the third floor can be used interchangeably for any religion, with no restriction to just one room. The center is a space of convergence for participants of different faiths to meet another person of a differnet faith to converse and learn.

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SKULL AND BONES

W E L L E S L EY C O L L E G E

Critic: Joel Janowitz

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Wellesley College

Fall 2008

Contour lines and the bleeding of ink define the human bones. The ink takes a ghostly turn bringing the erieness in the skulls.

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A B S T R A C T : Sexual violence in the political transitions in anceint Rome’s history help to be a better example of Henri Lefevbre’s “space of power” from his Production of Space.The story of Lucretia and Rome’s transition from a monarcy to a republic explains that transiton through Lefebvre’s representational space and spatial practice. In the chaos, the female body is the epicenter of confrontation and reconciliation that transforms domestic space into public, poltical space.

LEFEBVRE, SEXUAL VIOLENCE & POLITICS OF DOMESTIC SPACE

E S S AY E X C E R PT S

Figure 1. Rape of Lucretia (Tarquinius en Lucretiaca). 1575

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Production of Space, Sexual Violence and Rome

The sexual violence of the domestic space in the case of Lucretia complicates and yet strengthens Lefebvre’s spatial practice and representation of space in Production of Space.

In his analysis of Roman history Lefebvre is straight to the point while talking about its patriarchal culture. Yet the entity that is Rome as a place, as a city, as symbol and a part of myth cannot have its abstraction be that of the masculine and feminine binary of space under patriarchal power. Again there is the matter of confrontation and reconciliation. Underneath lies something in which the political movement blends the two for a moment and then evolves so that the political transition maintains the new reconciliation of body, symbol and special production. The violence that was in the domestic space is akin to unnatural production, raw nature infiltrating the domestic space.

Sexual violence in the production of space touches upon the boundaries between nature and civilization and has the capacity to change and not change the role of its participants. The body (the female body) in the schema of Lefebvre’s spatial practice and representational space is centralized and symbolized in the patriarchal system towards spatial and representational boundary. It calls to question on the patriarchal Roman culture and if the “space of power” is defined through male participants or female body which has embedded within her the production of space through absolute space, sacred space, historical space, contradictory space, and abstract space. Woman is influx and is nature while the male participant and male body is stagnant and needs to give meaning to the female body for the purpose of political survival and production of city and civilization.

The areas to further analyze sexual violence in myth, politics, and domestic space is to look at Lefebvre’s spatial practice and representational space. The space of power and the domestic space break apart and rebuild spatial practice and for a moment blur nature and civilization in the representation of space before stabalizaitng itself in the new political regime (the republic after the monarchy).The scenes of Lucretia’s rape makes two spaces out of one

space. Her body, is the social body, gave the space its social privacy and afterwards public-ness.

Figure 3 displays the domestic space as it is now also the space of political transition with male participants congregating around her body and taking her suicide as symbol to the unnatural act with monarchy and leading the road to the Republic. Figures 3 and 4, though the same myth, has two different scenes, the open public space and the domestic space. Both are inverting the space between public and domestic, with Figure 4 taking the outside to inside and the figure 3 publicizing the domestic space with more male participants. Her body symbolizes the spatial practice capable of inversion and political centrality susceptible to disruption.

Competence of the space perceived has deeper complications that are in need of mediation.

In seeking that mediation from the violence inflicted on the space, the representational space changes in character. Lefebvre’s direction of the representational space when analyzing Rome talks about “masculine principle” as dominant but the position of the feminine is problematic despite the patriarchal culture of Rome. When speaking of “world” in reference to the feminine, it symbol is not as clear enough. The body, Lucretia’s body, hand-in-hand with sexual violence in representational space, is more than world. It is control of nature and its role and evolution outside and inside domestic space. Not control of women but controlling order to main what is perceived and controlling the evolution of that which is perceived. One political rule has violated both body and space and in the chaos the body and space is defiled and re-sanctified by transition to another political rule that would ideally maintain the perceived space’s practices and body.

Figure 2. The Abduction of the Sabine Women- Nicolas Poussin, French, 1594-1665/1633-34- This scene dipicts a raw blending of the domestic space and the public space, tied together through violence.

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Figure 3. Death of Lucretia- Jean-HonorĂŠ Fragonard, late18th-early 19th

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Figure 4. Death of Lucretia of Rome- Filippino Lippi, Late 15th Century

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Figures 3 and 4 though the same myth, has two different scenes, the open public space and the domestic space. Both are inverting the space between public and domestic, with Figure 4 taking the inside to outside and Figure 3 publicizing the domestic space with more male participants.

B I B L I O G RA P H Y Livy, The Early History of Rome: Ab Urbe Condita. Translated by B. O. Foster. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 2005.

Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space. Malden,MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1991.

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A B S T R A C T : Rooms 5, 16, and 2 of the Villa of the Mysteries investigates social power and movement embedded in the rooms’ wall paintings. The wall paintings are the focal point on which spaitial orientation lays out prearranged social functions. The villa is an analysis of invitaiton and intuitive circulation grounded in Vitruvius’ Ten Books of Architecture and Brenda Longfellow’s “A Gendered Space? Location and Function of Room 5 in Villa of the Mysteries.”

POWER WITHIN PRIVACY | VILLA OF THE MYSTERIES

“...We must next consider the principles on which should be constructed those apartments in private houses which are meant for the householders themselves, and those which are to be shared in common with outsiders.The private rooms are those into which nobody had the right to enter without invitation, such as bedrooms, dining rooms, bathrooms, and all others used for the like purposes. The common are those which any of the people have a perfect right to enter, even without an invitation: that is, entrance courts, cavaedia, peristyles, and all intended for the like purpose.”6 Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture

Villa of the Mysteries

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The passage from Vitruvius helps piece together Longfellow’s ideas of spaces of invitation and spaces of privacy. Room 5, as Longfellow points out, is a space that is the farthest from the entrance and least accessible for visitors. Thinking of power in a private setting, it would be up for the owner of the villa to invite who he or she chooses into certain spaces and this can go on to understanding the relationships and social statuses of who is and is not allow in spaces such as Room 5. The owner controls movement between certain spaces as do the intuitive pathways of the villa (in case the visitor is alone); the guest cannot enter a certain space unless the movement of the architectural layout allows an intuitive path to certain rooms.

Another source the Longfellow takes into account on Room 5’s role in establishing prearranged spaces and power in the limitations of momvement between those spaces is the methods of Hiller and Hanson. Hiller and Hanson used methods that applied a mathmeatical model and analysis of the villa’s architectural layout which helped to distingush more precisely the activites of the room. From their methods and vocabulary Longfellow talks about the control of access to spaces in the villa with the use of nodes and control value. Nodes are the spaces or rooms in the structure that would have a specific controlling value which is the degree of accesibility of the space.7 The theory behind nodes is “the farther removed a space

is from its controlling node, the less accessible it is to both visitors and to inhabitants and the less likely it is that gatherings will take in that space”.8 For the Villa of the Mysteries, Longfellow points out there there are six nodes with the controling node being the peristyle (Figure 1).

The peristyle is still accessible to visitors, yet the peristyle of the villa controls the acces to Room 5. Between the peristyle and Room 5’s megalography there are four boundaries which convey that inaccesibility to visitors and prearranged use. Though its use would be infrequent, it still has prestige when it comes down to who can be allowed in the space and how it minimizes casual encounters. In regards to the megolography of Room 5, the analyzing the limited access to the space does help in putting together Room 5’s possible theories to its social uses and intentions along with its cultural significance in Pompeii and Roman history. Just to give a bit of an example there is theories to Room 5’s contribution in understanding it as a gendered space and the culture of cults of Pompeii. Rooms 16 and 2 follow Room 5 in the architectural prinicples and wall paintings in convey power relations and Roman society and history and give ideas to the social and cultural understanding of Rome.

The Villa of the Mysteries promotes Augustus rule and his cultural and politcal influence through Room 2 (Figures 6 and 2). In Room 2 the wall decorations are of the Thrid Style dating around 20 BC-50 AD in which there is transformation of the room where the painter uses techniques of illuison to create architectural forms that seem that there are real architectural features both projecting and receeding.16 Another marker of the Thrid Style isthe Egyptianizing motiffs on shiny black walls (Figure 2). The Egyptianizing motiffs incorporate miniature friezes, vegetal ornaments, and fantastical creatures, all which draw the observer in to look closer at the motiffs and examine the inventive deatils.17 The Egyptinaizing motiffs of Room 2 have stylized plants and has scenes showing Egyptian deities. Clarke points out how the decoration of the Third Style was more for the effect of the decoration draws the observer in with the style’s small details of its ornate ribbon thin columns and its lotus buds

Figure 1. Peristyle of Villa of the Mysteries

Figure 2. Egyptianizing motiff of Third Style Pompeian Wall Decoration 44

Figure 4. Room 16 (Cubiculum), Second Style Decoration

Figure 5. Megalographic Frieze of Room 5

Figure 3. Longfellow’s morphic map of pathways in Villa of the Mysteries Longfellow’s map shows the pathways to rooms in the Villa of the Mysteries.The floor plan of the Villa of the Mysteries is a later one with the villa’s expansion and control of access to certain rooms in the villa.

Figure 6. Room 2 (Tablinum), Third Style Decoration 45

which add to the a white band “delimiting the lower edge of the upper zone”.18 The power that comes with this decoration is that it purposely forces the oberserver to look closer at the decoration and the work put into it. There is a power play on the eyes. As Clarke explains it, “this decoration invites and rewards close viewing. Because its illusion occurs upon the wall’s reflective, black surface in taut linear designs, the viewer must pursue its detail”.19

B I B L I O G RA P H Y Clarke, John R. “Augustan Domestic Interiors.” In The Age of Augustus, by Karl Galinsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2005.

—. The Houses of Roman Italy 100 B.C.- A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and Deccoration. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Galinsky, Karl. Augustan Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Longfellow, Brenda. “A Gendered Space? Location and Function of Room 5 in Villa of the Mysteries.” In The Villa of the

Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2000.

Pappalardo, Umberto. The Splendor of Roman Wall Painting. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2008.

Vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan. Cambridge: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1914.

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A B S T R A C T : Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas of American architecture presents a spatial conflict between Taliesin West and the

Hohokam petroglyphs. This spatial conflict materially and aesthestically manifests from the two vying for a history with two sides to a story rooted in landscape, materiality, and oreitnalism. To reveal this tension, I used Edward Said’s Orientalism has foundation to my thesis.

F R A N K L L OY D W R I G H T | T A L I E S I N W E ST & IT S P ET R O G LY P H S

The forces at hand that are clashing are the petroglyphs’ and Taliesin West’s each individual history, sense of geography and space, and how petroglyphs convey realism that while Taliesin West’s romanticism, or Wright’s romanticism, does not fuse together. Taliesin West and the petroglyphs are not in sync with each other and for that reveal another dimension to Wright’s American architecture where there is the aesthetic imperialism where the power struggle is from the characteristics of orientalism. I use orientalism meaning the ways of creating the perception of an Other that concentrates on cultures different from either the realm of eurocentricity or American culture and creates representations in order to have a perception that give power and meaning to or take away power and meaning from one culture or hegemonic power. A good place to start is Edward Said on what orientalism is in order to understand theclashing nature of the petroglyphs to Taliesin West. According to Said: Figure 1. Hohokam Petroglyphs with Taliesin West

Orientalism “is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient to the Western learning, Western consciousness, and later Western empire.” “Orientalism is a school of interpretation whose material happens to be the Orient, its civilizations, peoples, and localities. Its objective discoveries” “are and always have been conditioned by the face that its truths, like any truths delivered by language are embodied in language, and what is the truthof language, Nietzsche once said, but a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, andanthropomorphisms- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are”3 Taliesin West’s and the petroglyphs’ history, the space and geography they occupy, and, one’s

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romanticism comes into conflict with each other’s realism. Each problem is interconnected with each other and show how there is a clash between Taliesin West and the petroglyphs where each is vying for power. The repertory of architecture in all of this becomes a “what is mine-what is yours”dialectic that is clashing and uneven in power. Looking to Said on the boundaries of space and geographical distinctions in his work Oreintalism, there is a connection to “an ideal other”. This creation of “an ideal other” transforms the geographical distinctions in that the geographical distinctions and boundaries coming from what’s “ours” and “theirs” creates arbitrary geographical distinctions that is imaginative and does not require the other culture and its people acknowledging the distinction of space.9 It all comes down to meaning and one side will in the end make up their legitimacy within space and geography and have power to create representation or take away representation and creates an ideal other.

The prize they are both aiming in their clashing is meaning and legitimacy within space, time, and being. What I keep in mind is Said in Orientalism referring to Claude Levi-Stauss on the native tribe and the defining of their environment. There is the native tribe assigning a definite place, function, and significance to objects in the environment and the need for order in which order can discriminate for the sake of security and identification and this classification that gives symbolism to the objects at hand.4 I look to this idea being applied by the native and the imperial outsider as they claim their cultural meaning and legitimacy.

Cultural meaning and legitimacy fuel imperialism and orientalism both makes its way into areas such as art, literature, and in this case architecture. Wright is monopolizing a petroglyphs’ existence and construing it for the purposes of Taliesin West. This monopolization of the petroglyphs aligns with Said’s idea of distinctive objects and orientalism where “distinctive objects are made up in the mind, and that these objects, while appearing objectively, have only a fictional reality.”5 Taliesin West continues Wright’s monopolization by finding legitimacy in time, place, and being in an aesthetic vampirism over the petroglyphs which becomes aes-

Figure 2. Exterior of Taliesin West

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thetic imperialism. When looking at Taliesin West’s and the petroglyphs’ cultural meaning and legitimacy when it comes to aesthetic imperialism we must first look into the history. Taliesin West’s position in the former Hohokam grounds, in Arizona, in the west, has a connection to the history of the region in the form of Manifest Destiny of the American West, Native American and American relations, and the othering of peoples for cultural dominance in American history. The petroglyphs’ history is the history the prehistoric Hohokam who used the land for hunting and other ceremonial and ritual purposes. The two timelines have different perspectives of history and different chronological places within history and interpretations of the west. Since there two timelines tell different stories there now the incentive of staking claim on which history to present and how to present it. In establishing one’s history there is laying claim to the definition and perspective of space and geography.

Figure 3. Interior of Taliesin West

B I B L I O G RA P H Y Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York:Vintage Books,1978. Pages 53-54, 203.

Images Hildebrand, Grant. The Wright Space. Seattle. Washington: University of Washington, 1991.

Smith, Kathryn. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin and Taliesin West. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Stoller, Ezra. Introduction by Neil Levine. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.

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