Vantage Point by Adam Smith

VANTAGE POINT TEMPORARY SITE AMPLIFYING ARCHITECTURE

ADAM SMITH

VANTAGE POINT TEMPORARY SITE AMPLIFYING ARCHITECTURE

ÂŠ 2010 Adam M. Smith Produced for 2010 Stormfront Thesis Unit Seminar Typeset in Helvetica Neue and Arial Narrow Printed by Lulu.com

TC contents 02 ABSTRACT 04 POLEMIC 10 Lexicon 12 situation 14 program 20 technique 24 SCHEDULE 26 paradigm map / precedents design precedents CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PRECEDENTS texts 40 case as thesis 46 wood edges 54 postscript the gambit demo set site

“You don’t design noises and then build them. if you want a noise, you make it. if you don’t like it, you keep making noises until you find one you like.” - Anderson Anderson

“We could do a lot of the preliminary site work with the bombers and then fly in a c-130 transport with short runway capability. the nose drops and the three of us come blasting out in a jeep, Cam’s driving, Peter’s sitting on the seat back witha walkie-talkie. mark’s in the back watching the plane trhough binoculars as fat yellow earth movers rattle out. i think the pioneers and terrorists understand what we’re talking about. talking and pictures are behind us now. we’re going to make some stuff.”

- Anderson Anderson

VII

02 abstract

Current modes of temporary architecture make use of material assembly in one way, by repeating itself in form and assemblage over the course of different sites and occupations. Temporary architecture can be a method of experimenting with the limits of architecture through physical research. The thesis will explore temporary architecture through itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s material assembly and disassembly, testing the limit of how far the changeable process can go. The architecture responds to a change in site, occupation, and program while using a designated set of material elements and allowing for them to change assembly for a series of events. What are the material limitations of assembly, disassembly, and reassembly through a consistent set of material? How does the process of making expose the inherent material qualities and embodied potentials? What is the architectural event? Can the architecture shift in response to changing conditions while in place? The techniques at play for the thesis will be the acquiring of material and using this to do physical material research. The strategy is to use the mate create the temporary structures while planing for them to be changeable and re-configurable in response to different sites. This will take place through full scale assemblies. With the program of vantage point, each one of the assemblies will allow users to experience a view that is detached from the ground, effectively creating a temporary ground plane displacing the viewer. The structures are temporary in order to explore the limit of material re-configuration over multiple sites. Artifacts are created through the thesis as full scale mock-ups of assembly techniques and full scale installations assembled on site.

04 polemic

TEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE Sir Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, London, 1851 (destroyed 1936)

On May 1, 1851 Joseph Paxton, a horticulturist and builder of green houses (not an architect), displayed to the world a pre-fabricated temporary structure made up of a standardized set of structural parts and glass panels. After the world’s fair in London, the building was disassembled and the pieces where taken to Sydenham, England where they were then reassembled into a larger Crystal Palace to serve as a cultural center for London.1 Recently the world was witness to the Shanghai World Expo where over 73 million people visited a site of 5.28 square km. On this site 96 countries were represented through temporary pavilions that showcase the industry and ideology of each country. Unlike the Crystal Palace, the majority of these pavilions will be disassembled and materials will be disposed of or recycled, and not intended to serve another purpose as architecture in their current state. Or another option is that they can be rebuilt identical to original with no attention to it’s site. The world’s fair of 1851 and many others to follow display architecture in a temporary setting, where land is set aside and buildings are built to show how architects are reaching the limits of architecture at that moment in time. Beyond the world’s fair and beyond the limits exhibited in Shanghai is the Young Architects Program at P.S.1 in New York. Where for the past 11 years a competition has been held to create a summer pavilion with the theme of “beach party” in the back lot of the museum. The commission is awarded to interesting young firms who are poised to built a temporary architecture that showcases some limit of architecture. Again in this case most of the installations are not reassembled afterward to live on, ending up as just photographs to describe the work and materials, except for the recent

proposal from Bjarke Ingles Group who intended to re-purpose the plastic film of the installation into small tote like bags for people to purchase after the summer event. The limits of architecture are showcased in temporary structures. As Bernard Tschumi states “there are productions at the limit of literature, at the limit of music, at the limit of theater. Such extreme positions inform us about the state of art, its paradoxes and its contradictions.”2 At the time that Tschumi was writing (1980), extreme positions in architecture were mostly explored through drawings, however, occasionally this exploration would be done through physical constructions, “these works of the limit often provide isolated episodes amidst the mainstream of commercial production”2 Today, the mode of architectural exploration has changed. With new techniques of making (i.e. digital fabrication) the driving force behind architectural advancement is physical construction with the architects now taking charge of this task. These are two of many ideas revolving within temporary architecture’s orbit. Temporary architecture has been shown to expose the limits of architecture through physical construction and experience of the space. While temporary architectural events can be a place to rethink assemblies and disassemblies of building elements in changeable formats according to their site, program, and occupation. What then are the limits of material assembly and disassembly for temporary occupations of space?

1. Leland M. Roth, Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning. (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1993) 436-437. 2. Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Limits in Architecture and Disjunction. (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts , 1996)102-103.

VANTAGE POINT Mankind has always had a desire to reach a higher elevation in order to survey the surrounding landscape. Prior to flight this was a feat done by foot to a higher physical elevation on ground. Depicted in Albrecht Altdorfer’s 1529 painting, titled The Battle of Issus is a battle scene viewed from a higher elevation in order to convey the scope and context of the battle within a larger landscape. Dennis Cosgrove depicts this vantage point as giving a “world view”.3+4 The painting captures a view unseen in landscape painting and continues to lead man to discover modes of flight in order to further view the landscape. Firstly in France, 1783, when Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, Jean-Baptiste Reveillon, and Giroud de Villette embarked on the first hot air balloon flight that would extend mankind’s view disconnected from the ground plane.5

Albrecht Altdorfer - The Battle of Issus - 1529

Viewing from a higher elevation gives the viewer a whole view of what is happening on the level of ground. It allows the body to break the plane of habitation and completes an image of what the surrounding conditions are. While giving a total view of the surroundings, this view is not so ordinary as described by Robert Smithson in his essay titled Aerial Art where he discusses the need for architecture to design “from the ground up and from the sky down”. “The rational structures of buildings disappear into irrational disguises and are pitched into optical illusions. The world seen from the air is abstract and illusive.”6 This abstraction is amplified by the height of the vantage point. How can temporary architecture engage the vantage point?

3. Dennis Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in Western Imagination. (Baltimore MD: The John’s Hopkins University Press 2001) 4. Kathy Velikov and Geoffrey Thün, Imaging America: Photography and the conception of North American Landscape (2009) 5. U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission: Early Balloon Flight in Europe 6. Robert Smithson, Aerial Art in Robert Smithson, The Collected Writings (University of California Press, 1996) 116-118

polemic

EVENT - noun - 1: (A) archaic : outcome (B) the final outcome or determination of a legal action (C) a postulated outcome, condition, or eventuality <in the event that I am not there, call the house> 2 a : something that happens : occurrence b : a noteworthy happening c : a social occasion or activity

What is the architectural event?

Event for architecture can make use of multiple definitions. The event can be the outcome of the architectural process, it can be the way the architecture acts in order to create an event of experience, or it can act within the realm of a social occasion or activity. Architecture can also act on all of these definitions at once. So how does the event or social occasion effect the architecture? Bernard Tschumi states “Our work argues that architecture—its social relevance and formal invention—cannot be dissociated from the events that “happen” in it.”7 As if architecture itself is acting on something outside of architecture to create space. The space is created out of the event that it is intended for. Juhani Pallasmaa speaks to the event of the architecture as a “a verb, an event. Rather than an object, architecture is a confrontation, interaction, and exchange”8 In this sense architecture is a series of events that bring the occupant or user to an understanding of the architecture. A description of the work done by Cathcart, Fantauzzi, and Van Elslander tries to capture the event of the making and the final events of experiencing the work. As described by the team in their forward to Pamphlet Architecture #25, “Our work is like a lever: it opens, measures, illuminates, but also creates a connection. It weighs a moment against a place, an event against an object. It finds a crack and widens it.”9

7. Bernard Tschumi, Spaces and Events in Architecture and Disjunction. (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts , 1996)139-150. 8. Juhani Pallasmaa, Constructing Essences in Pamphlet Architecture #25: Gravity (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2003) 6-7. 9. James Cathcart, Frank Fantauzzi, Terence Van Elslander, Pamphlet Architecture #25: Gravity (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2003) 5.

TECHNIQUE Dance, Ghost 7, July 2 to July 17, 2005

Lisa Iwamoto opens her book Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques with the following: “Architecture continually informs and is informed by its modes of representation and construction, perhaps never more so than now, when digital media and emerging technologies are rapidly expanding what we conceive to be formally, spatially, and materially possible.” Speaking to the digitization of fabricating architecture. This technique brings with it a new method of creation that breaks the previous norms where the aesthetic and formal structure is coming out of advanced geometries and the markings or physical traces on material by it’s process of making. Through the book, Iwamoto focuses on five different techniques of creating architectures: sectioning, tessellating, folding, contouring, and forming. These five techniques exemplify the processes of digital production, and making. “The final outcomes hinge on the ability to reconcile the developmental shifts in material and working method”10

and space for human occupation, we simultaneously structure our world.”11 Experience through construction is the technique that Pallasmaa writes about. The technique is process of making that exposes different inherent qualities of material. Technique is embodied energy within the material and making process. How does the technique expose and amplify the material, tectonics, and constructing of architecture?

While the aesthetic of this work is easily seen as digital, I would argue that the aesthetic comes out of it’s material production and making rather than a pre-determined idea or style. Speaking to Cathcart, Fantauzii, and Van Elslander’s Pamphlet Architecture #25 titled Gravity Juhani Pallasmaa states “The methodology of these explorations bypasses the notion of aesthetics: beauty resides in the very act of discovery, rather than in the externalized object. Aesthetics is transformed into material and embodied processes of making.”8 The making is the creation of architecture and the creation of organized space within the world. Making is then the acting upon of materials to form an architecture. “The act of construction evokes mythical perspectives. It has a double perspective: as we create a distinct place

10. Lisa Iwamoto, Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2009) 11. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Dance of Construction in Ghost (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2008)

polemic

THESIS The limits of material assembly and disassembly expose the embodied potential of a material. Allowing temporary architecture to disassemble and re-assemble in a new form with the same pieces is how the architecture responds to differences in site, occupation, and program. The vantage point is the architectural event of amplifying the site view at hand. By definition, amplifying is about expanding by the use of detail and to make greater and more important something at hand. Temporary architecture amplifies the vantage point across multiple sites and situations with a single set of materials.

10 lexicon separation - verb - 1: To set or keep apart: disconnect, sever to make a distinction between - sort - to disperse in space or time: scatter - 2: to set aside for a special purpose â&#x20AC;&#x153;The scenic overlook, for example, is an apparently benign situation that presents a delightful view and transports one back into collective memory. One can survey the land with detached and distanced safety, caught momentarily in the dreamy and idealized presence of a harmonious and pleasing past. Many find escape from the ills of contemporary society in the scene and in their experience of recollection. That the scene itself displaces viewers, keeps them at a safe and uninvolved distance, and thus presents the landscape as little more than an aesthetic object of attention, escapes the attention of the gazing subject, as does the fact that the scenic moment literally transports viewers back in time, effectively decontextualizing them from the very real ills of the present.â&#x20AC;?

- James Corner - Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes ascension - ascending - rising or increasing to higher levels, values, or degrees - mounting or sloping upward 2: rising upward usually from a more or less prostrate base or point of attachment extension - noun - the action of extending: state of being extended - an enlargement of scope or operation 2: the total range over which something extends 3: the stretching of a fractured or dislocated limb so as to restore it to its natural position 4: a property whereby something occupies space.

temporary - adjective - lasting for a limited time assembly - noun - 1: a company of persons gathered for deliberation and legislation, worship, or entertainment 2: capitalized : a legislative body; specifically : the lower house of a legislature 3: a meeting of a student body and usually faculty for administrative, educational, or recreational purposes 4 a : assemblage 5: a signal for troops to assemble or fall in 6: a : the fitting together of manufactured parts into a complete machine, structure, or unit of a machine b : a collection of parts so assembled 7: the translation of assembly language to machine language by an assembler event - noun - 1: (A) archaic : outcome (B) the final outcome or determination of a legal action (C) a postulated outcome, condition, or eventuality <in the event that I am not there, call the house> 2 a : something that happens : occurrence b : a noteworthy happening c : a social occasion or activity d : an adverse or damaging medical occurrence <a heart attack or other cardiac event> 3 : any of the contests in a program of sports 4 : the fundamental entity of observed physical reality represented by a point designated by three coordinates of place and one of time in the space-time continuum postulated by the theory of relativity 5 : a subset of the possible outcomes of an experiment

vantage point - noun - position or place that affords a wide or advantageous perspective; viewpoint tower 1: a building or structure typically higher than its diameter and high relative to its surroundings that may stand apart (as a campanile) or be attached (as a church belfry) to a larger structure and that may be fully walled in or of skeleton framework (as an observation or transmission tower) 2: a towering citadel : fortress 3: one that provides support or protection : bulwark <a tower of strength> 4: a personal computer case that stands in an upright position ground - noun - 1: a : the bottom of a body of water b: plural (1) : sediment 1 (2) : ground coffee beans after brewing 2 a : a basis for belief, action, or argument <ground for complaint> —often used in plural <sufficient grounds for divorce> b (1) : a fundamental logical condition (2) : a basic metaphysical cause 3 a : a surrounding area : background b : material that serves as a substratum 4 a : the surface of the earth b : an area used for a particular purpose <the parade ground> <fishing grounds> c plural : the area around and belonging to a house or other building d : an area to be won or defended in or as if in battle e : an area of knowledge or special interest <covered a lot of ground in his lecture> 5 a : soil, earth b : a special soil 6 a : an object that makes an electrical connection with the earth b : a large conducting body (as the earth) used as a common return for an electric circuit and as an arbitrary zero of potential c : electric connection with a ground 7 : a football offense utilizing primarily running plays

Site - 1: (A) the spatial location of an actual or planned structure or set of structures; (B) a space of ground occupied or to be occupied by a building 2: (A) the place, scene or point of something; (B) one or more internet addresses at which an individual or organization provides information to others often including links to other locations where related information may be found “Physical dislocation from the earth forces the

‘interpretation’ of the site to occur within the spatial and technological constructions of the building. In doing so, the building proposes a contemporary, more complex understanding of the natural world, while at the same time acknowledging that such constructions represent an ‘artificial’ division from an ‘original’ relationship to nature.”

- Hanrahnan/Meyers - An Interpretive Center modify - verb - (used with object) to alter or moderate amplify - verb - 1: to expand (as a statement) by the use of detail or illustration or by closer analysis 2: (A) to make larger or greater (as in amount, importance, or intensity) (B) to increase the strength or amount of; especially : to make louder (C) to cause (a gene or DNA sequence) to undergo amplification

12 situation

SITUATION 1: (A) the way in which something is placed in relation to its surroundings (B) site (C) locality 2: state of health 3: (A) position or place of employment: post, job (B) position in life: status 4: position with respect to conditions and circumstances The projects are set in situations that afford a specific vantage point to the user. The phasing of the situations allows for the material assembly to change in response to the situation. The situation of the view will inform the making of the built structure in order to prioritize the view. The thesis utilizes sites within a tangible range of travel around the Ann Arbor area in order to assemble, disassemble, and reassemble across a range of sites. The selection of sites is based on a vantage point afforded by the context. Ann Arbor and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surrounding context provides a range of site types from urban hardscapes, high points, fields, wooded areas, rivers, and lakes.

Downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan photographed looking west from a private jet upon final approach to the Ann Arbor Municipal Airport. 10/31/2008 - 1:59 PM

14 program role of program Vantage Point is a typological study in creating a temporary ground plane that allows for a wide or advantageous viewpoint. The program operates as a function for the assemblage of the material while prodding the notion of temporary ground. The temporary ground is surface that is raised above the horizontal surface of the earth. The vantage point is the event of the architecture. Being temporary, the program stays the same but with changing site and contextual conditions respond to. The workings of the program can change but each iteration is focused on a vantage point that is connected to the surroundings.

NOAA Headquarters, Washington D.C. - Morphosis

program role of the client(s) The user of Vantage Point is both builder and visitor. Speculating that one must have the will to build a structure that allows for an expansive view of their surroundings. The user is able to adjust the physical assembly in order to fully accommodate their needs or desires of the architecture. The second user being the outsider, visiting the structure to reach the temporary ground with no knowledge of the building process. The structure is then a confrontation and interaction to the user that moves through the structure.

Section / Plan / Axon - Prairie Ladder - Anderson Anderson Architects

program outline brief Vantage Point is a phased set of temporary structures built as an assemblage of parts able to be disassembled and reassembled in new aggregations according to site, program, and occupancy. The temporary structures require a variation in space requirements from single occupancy to multi-person occupancy within the range of material on hand. The program is required to allow for an expansive or detailed view that amplifies the current condition of a site. Specific program is dependant upon the specific site.

Salvaged Landscape - Catie Newell

20 technique MAKING - verb (used with object) - 1. to create; form 2. to cause to be or exist 3. to prepare 4. to force 5. to appoint 6. to win or earn 7. to amount to 8. to reach - (used without object) - 9. to act or behave 10. to cause to be as specified The technique of the thesis will be about making. The physical manifestation of the ideas in full scale to experience and participate in the design in itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true form. This thesis will not be about representing the real, this will be creating the real. The acts of making embody an energy that acts fast and intensely on the material and the site. Making is a force on the site and the material.

Dance, Ghost 7, July 2 to July 17, 2005

“Architecture is the art of what you can cause to happen—making architecture an act of will.” - Bryan MacKay-lyons

MATERIAL - noun - 1. the substance of which a thing is made 2. fabric adjective - 3. physical 4. pertinent The substance to be used for the thesis is the wood edge. Wood edges are castoffs from the board making process at Hardwoods of Michigan, located in Clinton, Mi. When a client comes to the mill to order lumber, they are given exact prices by the amount of wood they purchase. This price can be reduced by removing more or less from each board. The castoffs occur when rough sawn lumber is cut to dimensional lumber. The edges of the boards are cut off and sent to a chipper that then is used to burn in the on site kiln. The wood edges come in dimensions that vary in length and width but the depth of each piece is always the same at one inch. The species of wood varies across the batches of edges due to the variety of woods that the mill processes.

Wood edges stacked.

24 schedule

Material Procurement Design

Design Build

Disassemble

January

February

or mf ro nt w

vie Re

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se re

vie Re

Th ns

tio

Design Build

Build Disassemble Final Drawings + Statement

March

April

nt w vie

vie

dte

Fin

26 precedence

projects - Big Bamboo: Starn Studio - Prairie Ladder: Anderson Anderson - Tape Viena: Numen / For Use - Elastic Plastic Sponge: Ball-Nogues Studio books - Ghost: Building an Architectural Vision: Brian MacKay-Lyons - Prefab Prototypes: site-specific design for offsite construction: anderson anderson - Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques - Pamphlet Architecture #25: Gravity: Cathcart, Fantauzzi, Van Elslander - Architecture and Disjunction: Bernard Tschumi - Wood Works Onix: Architecture in Wood: Hilde de Haan Specific essays - The Dance of Construction: Juhani Pallasmaa - The Appeal of the Real: Christoph Grunenberg - Space and Events: Bernard Tschumi - Architecture and Limits: Bernard Tschumi - Aerial Art: Robert Smithson

Big Bambu, Starn Studio

“It’s especially wonderful to see how you have just thin air, and then ten minutes later your standing where there was nothing.” - doug starn

paradigm map

The paradigm map attempts to categorize and connect topics of interest surrounding the thesis in architectural discourse. The discourse in the map is shown through projects that exhibit temporary structure, tower structure, and projects that have a focus on physical making.

project big bambu: You Can’t, you won’t, and you don’t stop starn studio 2010 - Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York, New york Big Bambu holds the idea of the thesis as it is created and continuously changing throughout it’s lifetime. The project changes in the making process with a single material and a single piece of connective tissue.

“The work will embody a contradictory nature: it is lways complete, yet it is always unfinished. Working on the sculpture while the exhibition is open to the public, the artists and teams of rock climbers will provide visitors with a rare opportunity to experience their work as it unfolds.” “The reason we had to make it so big is to make all of us feel small—or at least to awaken us to the fact that individually war are not so big. Once we’re aware of our true stature we can feel a part of something much more vast than we could ever have dreamed before.”

project prairie ladder anderson anderson architects 1992 - vaughn, washington The Prairie Ladder project displays a way for the body to be separated from the ground by means of vertical ascension (a ladder). The project exemplifies the idea of accessing a vantage point and the expanded view that it creates. It also shows a means of assembly as it comes to a site in parts and is assembled by a mobile crane.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The selection of the ladder as an element common to each of the works introduces a vertical axis, marking a departure from the natural horizontal axis of the prairie. The ladder also provides a human scale, and proclaims human defiance of the horizontal limitations of the earth. This real or implied activity of vertical movement on the prairie, whether up into the sky or down into the earth, is the defining characteristic of placemaking â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of human settlement or intervention in the existing primal environment.â&#x20AC;?

project tape Vienna 10 / odeon numen / for use 2010 - odeon, vienna Using self adhesive tape as material, the series of installations take on space and amplify it within it’s structural and spacial boundaries. The material of these installs always stays the same but the site changes. Light allows the structures to glow as the tape pulls the light along its surface. The project also allows for occupation of the structure that transforms the user’s general means of occupying space. Where one must move through the space crawling and lounging instead of walking and sitting.

“The tendons of multiple layers of transparent adhesive tape are firstly stretched between the columns of an ex-stock exchange building. The following continous wrapping fo tendons results in a complex, amorphous surface through the process reminicent of growing of organic forms. The installation was executed in two working days and hosted a 17 minute performance of three dancers during “Quer”, the symposium of interactivity organized by Departure. 530 rolls of transparent self adhesive tape (35600m, 45kg).”

project elastic plastic sponge ball-nogues studio 2009 - coachella valley music & arts festival - indio, california The structure is a temporary space of shading and gathering. The structure comes to life in the night when it is allowed to glow and radiate it’s colors to the surrounding human laden grass. The structure is able to be manipulated and changed over the short period of it’s life at the festival and can travel to another site and be arranged in a completely different formation.

“The cell module is a very effective way of constructing a temporary structure: each can be transported as a flat unit to the Festival and rapidly assembled on site; after the Festival is over, dismantling and transportation to a new site is easy. From the Festival’s standpoint of an event spanning several days, the Elastic Plastic Sponge can be rapidly reconfigured to create unique spatial arrangements each day; its flexibility allows the designers to adapt to changing crowd, climate and site conditions.”

books

ghost: building an architectural vision bryan mackay-lyons 2008 - princeton architectural press Ghost lab is an architectural research program in Nova Scocia. The focus of the program is on designing and building structures along the Atlantic Coast. The importance to the thesis is the idea of building to respond to the landscape and a method of building that holds an energetic and meaningful tone.

prefab prototypes Anderson Anderson Architects 2007 - princeton architectural press Prefab Prototypes explores highly detailed projects in terms of their manufacture of parts to their assembly on-site. The assembly sequencing and tectonic connections are of particular interest to the thesis.

dIGITAL fABRICATIONS: aRCHITECTURAL AND mATERIAL tECHNIQUES lISA iWAMOTO 2009 - Princeton Architectural Press Material techniques and making techniques are strong players to the thesis and also to Lisa Iwamotoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book. The techniques are broken up into five different types as could the thesis in order to structure a way of building the temporary architectures.

Pamphlet Architecture #25: Gravity Cathcart, fantauzzi, van elslander 2003 - princeton architectural press Material technique, aesthetic, and an essay by Juhani Pallasmaa about constructing architecture and the event of architecture.

Architecture and disjunction Bernard Tschumi 1996 - MIT Press Two essays of interest to the thesis are: Architecture and Limits, and Spaces and Events

wood works onix: Architecture in wood Hilde de haan 2009 - nai University publishers Interest to the thesis is the ideas surrounding building with a certain material. In this case the material is wood. What it means to these architects to build with wood and where the wood comes from.

40 case as thesis

Thinking of what case means to the thesis, the idea of a book case came out of the need for temporary storage and transportation of books. Relating to the thesis meant that the book case should be allowed to assemble and disassemble with ease, be made out of a re-purposed material, and be able to change aggregations according to different site situations. The temporary book case is for books on the move. The compactness of the box allows for a large handful of books to be carried safely within the box to a destination. The single modules can then be stacked and strapped together to form a larger book case that allows for easy access to the books. Made out of double wall cardboard the box is durable, lightweight, able to pack flat, and recyclable once the need for the temporary case is no more.

46 wood edges

A possible material for the thesis is the wood edge. Available locally at Hardwoods of Michigan located in Clinton, Mi these edges have been generously made available as an endless supply from the mill. Wood edges are leftover pieces of wood that are cut off the sides of boards at a saw mill. All of the edges are 1” in depth and range from 1/2” to 3” in width. The edges also vary in length from 8’ to 12’. Normally the saw mill would put the edges into a wood chipper to produce wood chips but the mill has allowed us to use the pieces for material research in Adam Fure and Ellie Abron’s course titled Material Fringe. The structure is created by using a simple stacking method that creates dense and open spaces within the structure itself. Stacking the wood edges perpendicular to each other also creates a self rigidity that allows the structure to stand in wind gusts of 25 mph with no fasteners, only gravity to hold it together. The single 250w halogen shop light makes the structure glow through it’s slatted openings, casting shadow and light to the surrounding surfaces.

With Brad Cooper for Material Fringe taught by Ellie Abrons and Adam Fure

Mock - up of stacking structure.

Final reading room assembly drawing.

Creating a void in order to enter and possibly sit.

Mock - up of stacking structure.

Glow.

54 house as thesis (gambit)

The gambit served as a vertical tower situated in the backyard of a suburban residence. The focus of the tower was on the construction of the piece and the viewing point at the top that reached over the tree tops. As the view of the thesis was originally focused on backyards, the tower was left through the next projects but has become an integral part of the thesis as it displays the first inclination to separate from the ground plane.

Site plan with house.

Explode assembly drawing showing construction of tower and stairs with skin.

60 demo set

62 site (backyard)

Artifact

66 appendix image credits PG.26-27, 30-31 - Big Bambu - Starn Studio PG.32-33, 17 - Prairie Ladder - Anderson Anderson Architects PG.34-35 - Tape Berlin - Numen / For Use PG.36-37 - Elastic, Plastic, Sponge - Ball-Nogues Studio PG.38 - Ghost - Bryan MacKay-Lyons PG.38 - Prefab Prototypes - Anderson Anderson Architects

BIBLIOGRAPHY Leland M. Roth, Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning. (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1993) Dennis Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in Western Imagination. (Baltimore MD: The John’s Hopkins University Press 2001) Kathy Velikov and Geoffrey Thün, Imaging America: Photography and the conception of North American Landscape (2009) Robert Smithson, Aerial Art in Robert Smithson, The Collected Writings (University of California Press, 1996) 116-118 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction. (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts , 1996) James Cathcart, Frank Fantauzzi, Terence Van Elslander, Pamphlet Architecture #25: Gravity (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2003) Lisa Iwamoto, Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2009) Juhani Pallasmaa, The Dance of Construction in Ghost (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2008) Hilde de Haan, Wood Works Onix: Architecture in Wood (NAi Publishers, The Netherlands 2009) Mark Anderson, Peter Anderson, Prefab Prototypes (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007) Mark Anderson, Peter Anderson, Donlyn Lyndon, Cameron Schoepp, and Andrew Zago, Anderson Anderson: Architecture and Construction (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2000) Bryan MacKay-Lyons, Ghost: Building an Architectural Vision (Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2008)