Marked Passages
Amanda Byars Graduate School of Architecture | GSoA College of Design Construction and Planning University of Florida Gainesville, Florida 32603
Contact
anbyars@yahoo.com
Published 5.2014
Marked Passages Revealing a Community Portrait
Amanda Byars Masters of Architecture GSoA | University of Florida
Faculty Advisors Committee Chair | Martin Gundersen Committee Co-Chair | Bradley Walters The following is a Masters Research Project presented to the University of Florida in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Architecture University of Florida | 2014
Marked Passages Revealing a Community Portrait
“Architectural compositions are capable of enacting allegories of perception, linguistic structures, conceptual structures in logic, philosophical and theological structures, social relations, ethical and moral values, and dramatic and performative structures.” John Hendrix, “Architecture as the Psyche of Culture”
Contents 1 introduction Architecture and Identity
5 community essence
19 historical marking
History
Greek Agora
Traces
Fatehpur Sikri
Microcosm
Ullastret
The Americans, Robert Frank Uncommon Places, Stephen Shore Victims, John Hejduk
Ljubljana Castle
29 initial probing Vicenza, Italy A City
45 measured research Gainesville, FL USA A City
Sun Center Plaza A Public Space
The Pedestrian Conclusion An Urban Promenade
63 urban markings An Urban Promenade
introduction Architecture and Identity
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1
That architectural tracings are apparitions, outlines, figments. They are not diagrams but ghosts. John Hejduk
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Architecture and Identity There is a duality which exists between the physical body and the spirit. It is through our physical body that we communicate the other to the outside world and it is through this form of communication that identity and personhood can be defined. The spirit leaves traces and impressions of the internal world in the physical world, the body and its surroundings. The spirit dwells within the structure, the architecture of the body. The architectural body is imbued with the presence of the spiritual, as well, simultaneously and strategically revealing and concealing its character. They are an image of an internal essence: a portrait. Portraits are not just a likeness of a subject, but a revelation an internal essence. The image of a subject can distort our understanding of the reality that lies within. In his collection, The Americans, the photographer Robert Frank captures the identity of large community through small glimpses into their world. With the inclusion of the context, the places people meet, and the things they collect around them, we begin to understand more than just a picture of some people could ever tell us. We begin to understand how the community is rather than what the individuals look like. Stephen Shore takes this a bit further by revealing the identity of a community through a collection of photographs that rarely reveal the visage of a person, in his collection, Uncommon Places. This absence reveals the undercurrent of a place and a community through the things that make up a place and the people who use it. Each of these is an alternative to the formal portrait. Rather than focusing on an image, they seek through tangential relationships to reveal the subject at its underlying core. Their informality allows an ease of access that can often be blocked by the disarming gaze of a formal portrait. Through the sideways glances of these tangential portraits, the viewer sees around corners, down alleys and behind facades to the true identity. The tangential portrait has the power to reveal all that seeks to hide behind that faces we give to the world. Facades fall and the true essence is what is found behind. “Architecture can be seen as the psyche, or collective mind, in spatial and structural form, of a culture. Until the invention of the printing press, architecture was the primary means of the expression and communication of the ideas, values, and beliefs of a culture.” — John Hendrix, “Architecture as the Psyche of a Culture”1 Architecture can fill this role of revealing the essence, identity, of a person or community and reflect that to the world. The public spaces, as well as the architectural elements, rhythms, boundaries and edges that shape them, can be studied in order to gain greater understanding of the essence of a community. This portrait can be used to create a site specific, community specific architecture; one that is not just made of the physical elements of a place, but of the character of that place and the people that inhabit it. With a methodology which seeks to understand the essence of a community, the design which results can seek more fully to be a reflection of the community which it serves. Marked Passages measures and maps the architectural characteristics that shape the occupation 3
introduction
patterns of a community in its existing public spaces, in order to gain insight into a means of designing public spaces. The results of this analysis and the information uncovered through this process reveal an underlying essence of the community, something that is beneath the surface that defines our collective identity. The community, like each of its members, has an identity which cannot be shown through mere images, but instead must be sought out and revealed. The resulting diagrams are the basis for the construction of a civic portrait: a community specific architecture. These indirect associations begin to paint a picture of something that is beneath the surface that defines our identities. This project constructs a tangential portrait of the community of Gainesville through the architectural suggestions that begin to define their movement. This portrait reveals something of the identity of the community: how it moves, operates and occupies its public space. This is the basis of the information that begins to shape the architectural portrait of the community. Usually, a public space is constructed, the community begins to occupy it, and a relationship is born between the traces of occupation and the architectural elements, rhythms, types of edges and boundaries and thresholds that shape those traces. The task is to mirror this process and look now at the existing relationships between these traces and the elements that shape them and use this information to embed information about the community and its patterns in the construction of a new public project.
1 John Hendrix, “Architecture as the Psyche of a Culture,� in The Cultural Role of Architecture: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Paul Emmons et al. (New York: Routledge, 2012), 208. 4
community essence History
The Americans, Robert Frank
Traces
Uncommon Places, Stephen Shore
Microcosm
Victims, John Hejduk
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Tracings are similar to X-rays, they penetrate internally. John Hejduk
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community essence
History The essence of a community is not merely defined by the present actions, attitudes and values of that community. There are layers of information that work together to shape the identity of a society. The history of a place and a people form several of these layers. The collective psyche is shaped by the events, and stories that are passed on in the community about its formation, its livelihood, its struggles, successes. Buildings assist in perpetuating the history and memory of a community by acting in three ways, “they materialize and preserve the course of time and make it visible; second, they concretize remembrance by containing and projecting memories; and third, the stimulate and inspire us to reminisce and imagine.”2 Buildings hold cultural memory and carry it through time. Their permanence facilitates a longer lasting impression than a mere story or historical fact. These events are embedded in the history of the building, held within its walls and projected into the present and future through their ongoing presence in the community. Buildings of little architectural significance are preserved and held in esteem in a community because of their value as orators of the community identity. The demolition of one of these building has an impact on the whole. Not only is the city landscape forever shaped by its absence, but a story line is lost. A connection to the past is severed and a blankness is left in its place. This is not to say memories cease to be recorded. The demolition of the building itself becomes a part of the collective memory impressing itself on its surrounding. Architecture shapes the spaces we inhabit so strongly that the absence of one building changes our perception of everything around it.
Robert Frank. “Americans 38. Baber shop through screen door.”
2 Marc Treib, Spatial Recall: Memory in Architecture and Landscape (New York; London: Routledge, 2009). 8
Microcosm This idea that architecture embodies something that is outside itself, something that is greater than merely the sum of parts that can be assembled and reassembled in an infinite number of permutations, is not a new one. Plato discusses architecture and space in terms of chora or a receptacle.3 He viewed the body as a receptacle for the spirit, which is to say that the spirit comes and resides and the body merely receives. It does this without ever being altered or impressed upon by that which it receives. In turn, architecture is a receptacle for the body, lacking any spirit of its own; it receives the body without adulteration or impression. Dalibor Vesely expounded on this idea of the human body, as well as the architectural body, as a microcosm of the cosmos.4 The cosmos is the layering of proportions and the part to whole relationships. The universe is a receptacle for the world, the world the receptacle for the body and the body the receptacle for the soul. Humans create another layer in the cosmos through the generation of the built world. Architecture takes its place in the hierarchy as the receptacle for the body, as Plato explains, “the receptacle of the body continues to receive all things but never takes a permanent impress from any of the things that enter it.”5 This begs the question, however, is not the cosmos in the end revealed and concealed periodically at all of its levels? If a building is only understood as a vessel for the body, how then, can the search for an architectural language which expresses an idea or concept have any validity? If it is only a vessel for the body then there is no meaning outside of function and occupation. Any idea or intent would then become extraneous ornament. The cosmos, then, is better represented by a fractal than an unimpressible vessel, leaving no indication of the essence of that which it holds. At various levels of detail, patterns are revealed. The nature of the fractal, however, is apparent at all levels. The ways in which these patterns are expressed varies at differing levels of detail and so a different type of information and embodiment is expressed depending on the level of detail explored. In this same way, the essence of the spirit or the divine leaves an impression, a signifier of its presence, and in turn, its absence. The human body is full of indications of the divine various aspects of it simultaneously revealed and concealed on is surface and in its workings, each individual sharing a unique aspect of the whole in intimate personal detail. The body then is an expression of the divine, and the architectural body cannot help but also become a part of the chain that reveals a level of information about the divine. Just as an individual body reveals aspects of the spirit, the architectural body has a similar means of expression. 3 Plato, and H. D. P Lee, Timaeus and Critias (New York, NY: Penguin Books,1977). 4 Dalibor Vesely, “Architectonics of Embodiment,” in Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, ed George Dodds et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 28. 5 Plato, and Lee, Timaeus and Critias. 9
community essence
Stephen Shore. “Twenty-first and Spruce Streets.”
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Traces On the larger scale, we can look to the public forum. Each member of a community contributes to the traces left on the physical world. Each community has tendencies, actions, and priorities which embody the internal essence of the community as a whole. By observing these traces of the collective, we come to understand the essence of the community as a whole. Just as the spirit dwells within the architecture of the body, so the body dwells within the architecture of the built environment. The architectural body is imbued with the presence of the spiritual as well. Architecture can therefore be seen an image of an internal essence. Just as the body is a vessel, which reveals the nature of the spirit within, architecture can also reveal the essence of the spiritual. There is an energy, an identity and a life that is tangible in spiritual presence. This can be seen clearly in the work of John Hejduk. In Victims, he embeds a presence to each piece of this memorial. As he writes about his work, we come to understand how the spirit of the project is intimately intertwined with his design decisions.6 Each detail holds the identity of the project to communicate the spiritual presence of the place. The project as a whole holds an intense meaning and narrative. This narrative is an allegory which is expressed not only on the level of the written narrative but within the historical framework of the monument, the present city and its inhabitants as well as the history of the collective of those memorialized in by the monument. Another level is created by the directions for the construction process which creates a new historical framework, the history of the construction of the monument itself.7 There is a layering of time and ideas in reality and in fiction which weaves a new reality in which histories, literal and fictional, exist in one place simultaneously. The identity that is expressed is the result of this overlap of real, unreal, past, present and future.
6 John Hejduk and Architectural Association (Great Britain), Victims: A Work (London: Architectural Association, 1986). 7 Hejduk and Architectural Association (Great Britain), Victims. 11
community essence
John Hejduk. Victims Site Plan.
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community essence
The Americans Robert Franks project, The Americans, seeks to uncover the identity of a community through photography. Instead of focusing on the identity if each individual subject he approaches them circuitously. Human presence may be direct or implied, but in neither case is it the primary concern of the photograph. This allows the viewer to avoid the trap of identification with a face and instead allows us to see around the façade into the reality of what lies behind it. We come to an understanding of the community as a whole through those things that surround them: those things that make up the everyday life of the community. The identity is revealed through sideways glances and brief fleeting moments rather than the up front expressions and smiling faces. It is a tangential relationship between the community and the things they collect around themselves.8
(Left) Robert Franks, “Trolley.” (Below) Robert Franks, “Men’s Room, Railway Station.”
8 Sarah Greenough, Stuart Alexander, and National Gallery of Art (U.S.), Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans (Washington; [Göttingen]; New York, NY: National Gallery of Art ; Steidl ; Distributed in North America by D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers, 2009).
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community essence
Uncommon Places Stephen Shore takes this circuitous perspective of portraiture, the informal portrait, to another level. In his project, Uncommon Places, the human figure is nearly always absent. When the figure is present we see them from behind, off to the side, or in the distance. Rarely do we encounter the visage. From this noticeable absence, the appearance of the person becomes not secondary as in Franks work, but inconsequential to the understanding of the essence of the society. Instead, we come to understand the community through its tangential relationship to its spaces, built and natural. The identity of the communities he photographs are revealed through the spaces each community inhabits.9 (Left) Stephen Shore, “Second Street East and South Main Street.” (Right) Stephen Shore,“El Paso Street.”
9 Stephen Shore, Uncommon places (New York: Aperture, 1982).
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Victims From Shore we learned the ways in which identity can be revealed through the spatial qualities of the natural and built world in which we inhabit. The work of John Hejduk takes this understanding and uses it as the founding principle for his design process in his project Victims. This unbuilt work was submitted in a competition for a World War II memorial in Berlin on a site which previously contained a torture chamber.10 This sets the whole project in the historical narrative of the site and the community of Berlin. Hejduk then generates a complex set of narratives that define the identity of individuals and their relationships to one another. Tangential relationships between architectural elements are defined by the identities of this narrative. The identities of the few are used to construct the spatial narrative of the portrait of the many. Another layer is developed in the narrative of the prescribed construction. Construction phases, their duration, landscape and their growth patterns all play a role in the construction of an informal portrait of the community lost in the war. The essence of this community is constructed not only through the spatial arrangements, but the entire construction process.
10 Hejduk and Architectural Association (Great Britain), Victims. 17
community essence
John Hejduk,�Victims Sketches.�
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historical marking Greek Agora Fatehpur Sikri Ullastret Ljubljana Castle
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Erasures imply former existences. John Hejduk
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historical marking
Ullastret This modern intervention into a medieval Spanish town by Mateo Arquitectura focuses on movement and path. The revitalization occurs under foot. The path moves through the historic parts of town, meeting edges of historic buildings and mapping the medieval streets with a modernity that honors the history of the place without negating its own modern origins. The act of marking the ground is not a repetitive act but each turn in the route is treated with the same importance and nuance as the previous.11 (Left and Below) Mateo Arquitectura, Development of Ullastret. Ullastret, Spain.
11 “Revisiting Ullastret « Mateo Arquitectura,” accessed April 30, 2014, http://www. mateo-maparchitect.com/2014/03/19/revisiting-ullastret/.
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Athenian Agora The Athenian Agora was a proper city center. It acted as a gathering point for the city along the Panathenaic Way. Visitors and travelers arriving at entrance of the city and making their way to the Acropolis passed through the large central square of the Agora. They were met with a series of stoa which framed and controlled the movement and created covered spaces for events.12 It served as a market place, a civic meeting place, philosophical discussion site, and a place for social gathering.13 The openness of the stoa allowed for a variety of programs depending on the needs of the city. Movement through the agora is sometimes scripted, framed by the colonnades of the stoa, civic structures and temples of the agora, and sometimes open allowing for free movement and gathering in the square. 12 Janina K Darling, Architecture of Greece (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004), 32-40. 13 Alexander Tzonis and Phoive Giannise, Classical Greek Architecture: The Construction of the Modern (Paris: Flammarion, 2004), 173-178. 23
(Right) Plan of Athenian Agora.
historical marking
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historical marking
Fatehpur Sikri Palace Designed, built and abandoned in a little over 14 years, the Mogul Palace at Fatehpur Sikri blurs the boundaries between path and volume.14 A series of colonnaded courtyards and enclosures, the palace operates on an orthogonal grid. The path through the palace grounds slips between these organizing courtyards. Shifting from one volume and the next the path begins to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior. The path can no longer be differentiated from the volumes as they merge into a single element.
Fatehpur sections
Sikri
Palace
Plan
and
14 Attilio Petruccioli and Thomas Dix, Fatehpur Sikri (Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1992), 6-17. 26
Ljubljana Castle Over the a period of twenty years, the Ljubljana Castle has been under the process of renovation and modernization by the architectural team Miha Kerin,Majda Kregar, and Edo Ravnikar. The grounds and the structure itself have slowly received a restructuring face lift that extends the modernized city below up the funicular to the castle grounds.15 Once within the castle walls the modern intervention carves the way of the path into the existing structure. Here it begins to define new volumes within the existing ones. The path is no longer defines by the surrounding volumes but creates new volumes within and around the existing ones.
15 “Ljubljana Castle,� Culture.si, accessed April 30, 2014, http://www.culture.si/en/ Ljubljana_Castle.
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(Below) Funicular at Ljubljana Castle. (Left) Modern intervention at Ljubljana Castle.
historical marking
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4 Drawings and tracings are like the hands of the blind touching the surfaces of the face in order to understand a sense of volume, depth, and penetration. John Hejduk
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initial probing Vicenza, Italy A City
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“Attention is of the essence of our powers; it is that which draws other things toward us, it is that which, if we have lived with it, brings the experiences of our lives ready to our hand. If things but make impression enough on you, you will not forget them; and thus, as you go through life, your store of experiences becomes greater, richer, more and more available. But to this end, you must cultivate attention — the art of seeing, the art of listening. You needn’t trouble about memory, that will take care of itself; but you must learn to live in the true sense. To pay attention is to live, and to live is to pay attention.” Louis Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats
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Vicenza, Italy
A City
The town of Vicenza, Italy is in northern Italy in the Veneto region. It is a small and wealthy town. The foundations and the streets as well as the downtown city structure are Roman. There are two rivers the cut through town that have bridges the date to medieval times, and the facades range from the Renaissance to the Baroque and onward. In this town, Andrea Palladio lived and worked and many of his works are a regular part of everyday life here. The center of the city and the life of the community is Piazza dei Signori. This large piazza serves as a focal point of activity, a meeting place, and houses the many markets and food festivals throughout the year. It is flanked on one side by the Palladian Basilica, a renaissance masterpiece. The Basilica serves as an anchor for the activity of the piazza. A beautiful loggia holds three smaller medieval structures formerly the civic center which now house shops and restaurants. The Palladian addition continues to serve as a channel for foot traffic from the outside of town into the piazza. Because of this, the Basilica becomes a link between the city center and the rest of town. People stroll through its passageways, rest on its steps and seek refuge in its colonnade. It is a public space that is defined, occupied and becomes a part of the heartbeat of the community. The choice to study this space was not just as a beautiful piece of architecture but as a window to the essence of Vicenza as a community.
(Far Left) Vicenza rooftops and Monte Berico from the top of the Palladian Basilica. (Left) Sketch of the Palladian Basilica and the Campanile from Piazza dei Signori.
initial probing
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Occupational sketches of the Palladian Basilica focusing on movement and occupation. 35
initial probing
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Studies diagramming types of occupation in Palladian Basilica. 37
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The study of the Palladian Basilica began with a series of sketches that express the spaces through the lens of human occupation and movement. These became the foundation for more measured spatial diagrams marking types of movement, their locations and densities. In addition, they became the framework for a perceptual perspective study which layers rhythm, patterns and structure with the measure and proportion of the spaces to begin to understand their influence on this movement.
initial probing
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Measured study of spaces of gathering, paused movement and crowd movement, their locations and densities. 41
initial probing
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Perceptual perspective of Palladian Basilica and exploring rhythm, measure, structure and proportion. 43
initial probing
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5 The lead of an architect’s pencil disappears (drawn away) metamorphoses. John Hejduk
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measured research Gainesville, FL USA A City
Sun Center Plaza A Public Space
The Pedestrian Conclusion An Urban Promenade
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Gainesville, FL USA A City
These beginnings lead to a more in depth study of a public space in Gainesville, FL. Founded in 1854,16 Gainesville is a small city in North Florida. The town is fairly young in lively and the historic downtown area has the charm of an older more, well established community. The focus of the downtown historic area is the Historic Federal Building, now the Hippodrome Theater. This is the terminus of Southeast First Street. From its steps you can see passed University Avenue to the Boulevard beyond. There is a logic to the city, a rational grid which organizes it. The downtown streets are lined with restaurants and shops on either side. It looks much the same as it does in the photographs of Elmer Harvey Bone, who photographed the city from 1925-1968. His work paints an informal portrait of the community of Gainesville during these years. The people of the city, the streets and the city events tell a story about Gainesville as a community. 16
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Charles H. Hildreth and Merlin Cox, History of Gainesville, Florida, 1854-1979 (Gainesville, Alachua County Historical Society, 1981), 6.
(Below) E.H. Bone, “Five Men and a Young Boy by Large Vegetable Baskets.” (Right) E.H. Bone, “Smiling Man Stands in Front of a Building or Warehouse.”
measured research
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(Below) E.H. Bone, “View from Behind of W. Caldwell Speaking to a Crowd of People.”
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(Top) E.H. Bone, “Line of Cars on university Avenue Business District.” (Mid) E.H. Bone, “Tiny Photo of Horseback Riders in the Parade.” (Below) E.H. Bone, “McCrory’s Store in Downtown Gainesville.”
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Sun Center Plaza A Public Space
(Left) Plan and Elevation study of Sun Center Plaza (Below) Diagrams of occupation, edges and boundaries, and thresholds (from left to right)
The Sun Center Plaza sits within the urban fabric of the city and acts as a vessel for the historic federal building, now the Hippodrome Theater. This space serves as a connection point, linking the community to the city center and downtown areas. These are qualities that it holds in common with Palladio’s basilica in Vicenza. It is these similarities, the union between the public space and the framework of the city, the connection to the history of the place, and serving the community as the link between the community as a whole and the city center. By understanding the existing public spaces, a greater understanding of the function they serve for the city can be gained. The study began with plan elevation studies of boundaries, edges, thresholds, structure and rhythms. All of these shape movement, and occupation in the plaza.
measured research
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Diagram of Rhythm of Sun Center plaza. 53
measured research
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Sketches continue this search for an understanding of how the spaces begin to be occupied. These sketches in conjunction with the earlier diagrams became the foundation of a projected axonometric diagram of these two ideas, occupation and the foundational architectural elements that shape it. By taking the information from this diagram a series of models and sections begin to layer the memory of the city, moving a step away from the Sun Center and towards revealing what helps us to understand Gainesville as a community. Layering studies of architectural and spatial definition with ideas of occupation creates a landscape of underlying ideas and threads which divorces the project from the original plaza and brings us towards the revelation of the essence of Gainesville as a community.
measured research
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Occupational sketch of Sun Center Plaza.
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Axonometric diagram of Sun Center Plaza exploring occupation, structure, rhythm, boundaries, edges and thresholds.
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The Pedestrian Conclusion An Urban Promenade
Layering studies of architectural and spatial definition with ideas of occupation creates a landscape of underlying ideas and threads which divorces the project from the original plaza and brings us towards the revelation of the essence of Gainesville as a community. Gainesville can be understood as a series of edges that frame a promenade. The historic downtown area is marked with a history of events that bring people together to move along the city streets, this is reinforced by countless contemporary events that bring people to the downtown area. Music festivals, farmers markets, and art events reinforce that pedestrian activity of the downtown area which is not about gathering in a large piazza like Vicenza, but instead about moving through a series of spatial events along a path, like the agora of ancient Greece. Marked Passages reveals Gainesville’s pedestrian promenade and reestablishes a connection between University Avenue and the Historic Federal Building as well the boulevard to the north, which continues the broken promenade in many community events. 61
measured research
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To take a site: present tracings, outlines, figments, apparitions X-rays of thoughts. Meditations on the sense of erasures. To fabricate a construction of time. To draw out by compacting in. To flood (liquid densification) the place-site with missing letters and disappeared signatures. To gelatinize forgetfulness. John Hejduk
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urban markings An Urban Promenade
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The Site
The city of Gainesville operates as a series of promenades. There was a continuity on First Street extending from the old federal building north across University Ave to the Boulevard to the North. This historical city edge was broken with the addition of Bo Diddley plaza. The original structure of the city is continued through the Sun Center plaza and many of the downtown street edges. Each historic edge fosters the pedestrian path. Store fronts, restaurants, outdoor dining establishments and bars line the streets creating a dynamic edge which opens up to the streets during the rush of the day and pulls itself back in at the end of the day. This is interrupted with pockets of silence do to the steady deconstruction of the original city fabric. Instead, there are pockets of activity that are near one another but lack continuity. 67
urban markings
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Marked Passages seeks to reestablish the historic promenade and to link the isolated pockets of activity in Gainesville’s downtown area with a continuous path. By closing the streets between University Avenue and the Southeast Second Avenue and Main Street and Southeast Second Street to vehicular traffic, the downtown is allowed to become a pedestrian zone. The roads now act as large corridors allowing pedestrians to move freely through the spaces. Outdoor events are no longer relegated to the sidewalks or hampered by street closures but are allowed to move into these wider spaces and to activate them on a regular basis. Beginning at the corner of University and Southeast First Street the project moves through the downtown area, along edges, through buildings and behind facades towards the historic federal building. This relationship to the landmark of the Hippodrome Theatre encourages a tangential perspective of the city and by the city: a tangential portrait. urban markings
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Model of spatial conditions Gainesville’s tangential portrait 71
in
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(Above) Marking of ground and large, open spaces of relief. (Right) Turning a corner and vertical articulation. 73
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Raised spaces which allow of the path to weave vertically into the space as well as passing below. 75
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Compressed spaces that move between volumes and begin to carve into them blurring the edges and the boundaries of the street scape. 77
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1/32” - 1’ 81
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Model exploring promenade and its impact on the existing urban landscape. 1/32� - 1’ 83
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In the plaza, a new infrastructure is established. Revisiting the Greek stoa, this permanent structure allows for temporary occupation of the many city walking events. Farmers markets, art festivals, art walks each occupying the spaces on a temporary basis and leaving it free for new exhibitions to be put on by the city. This indoor outdoor event space creates a corridor which rises up over head and frames the plaza. From here the promenade crosses the street and begins to carve into the ground floor of the hotel and the neighboring social services building, where new permanent commercial spaces take over. The narrow alley widens and creates a more intimate outdoor shopping experience. The shopping alley ends with a large vertical space frames by the hotel which acts as a threshold for the shopping zone and an outdoor atrium for casual performances. Crossing another wide pedestrian street, the promenade carves into another building. This creates another point of relief. The large mixed use building with residences above holds a private courtyard that has not access for the public. By cutting into this structure, the courtyard creates a cloistered public space, quiet and removed for the activity of the streets outside. The promenade moves through this courtyard space, taking advantage of the shift in scale and experience to create a public park for reflection and quiet within the downtown area. Turning a corner here in the park the path emerges from the courtyard and structure directly in front of the old federal building. The activity of the Hippodrome Theatre and the Sun Center Plaza bleed out from here across the street to the new structure which holds artist studios, galleries and restaurants with residential spaces above. These residencies bring people into the promenade to activate it as a space not just for visiting but for living.
Model with plan projection 1/32� - 1’
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Detail of model showing mixed use zone across form the Hippodrome 1/32� - 1’ Theatre. 87
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Marked Passages reveals the essence of Gainesville, and constructs a tangential portrait of the community. The pedestrian identity of the city is established through explorations in occupation, traces, and through existing public spaces and their architectural patterns and structures. The promenade revitalizes and reconnects the city to itself and its historical roots. (Left) Model with projected plan. (Right) Details of “stoa” framing Bo 1/32” - 1’ Diddley Plaza.
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Sectional study of historical tracings though City Plaza looking towards the Hippodrome Theater 91
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Sectional study of historical tracings though pedestrian alley looking towards the Hippodrome Theater 93
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Section through city plaza facing the Hippodrome Theater 95
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Section through pedestrian alley facing the Hippodrome Theater. 97
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Resources Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1988. Darling, Janina K. Architecture of Greece. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. Deguy, Michel, Jacques Derrida, and Wilson Baldridge. Recumbents: Poems. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Greenough, Sarah, Stuart Alexander, and National Gallery of Art (U.S.). Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans. Washington; [Göttingen]; New York, NY: National Gallery of Art ; Steidl ; Distributed in North America by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2009. Hejduk, John, and Architectural Association (Great Britain). Victims: A Work. London: Architectural Association, 1986. Hendrix, John. “Architecture as the Psyche of a Culture.” In The Cultural Role of Architecture: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, edited by Paul Emmons, John Hendrix, and Jane Lomholt, 208-215. London: Routledge, 2012. Hildreth, Charles H. and Merlin Cox, History of Gainesville, Florida, 1854-1979 (Gainesville, Alachua County Historical Society, 1981), 6. “Ljubljana Castle.” Culture.si. Accessed April 30, 2014. http://www.culture.si/en/Ljubljana_Castle. Mukarovský, Jan, and John Burbank. Structure, Sign and Function: Selected Essays. New Haven [u.a.]: Yale Univ. Press, 1978. Pérez-Gómez, Alberto, 1949-. “Hermeneutics as Discourse in Design.” Design Issues 15, no. 2 (Summer
1999): 71–79. doi:10.2307/1511843. Petruccioli, Attilio, and Thomas Dix. Fatehpur Sikri. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1992. Plato, Harold North Fowler, W. R. M Lamb, and Robert Gregg Bury. Plato. London; New York: Heinemann ; G.P. Putnam’s, 1914. Plato, and H. D. P Lee. Timaeus and Critias. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1977. “Projects « Mateo Arquitectura.” Accessed April 30, 2014. http://www.mateo-maparchitect.com/en/ projects/?project=3541. “Revisiting Ullastret « Mateo Arquitectura.” Accessed April 30, 2014. http://www.mateo-maparchitect. com/2014/03/19/revisiting-ullastret/. Samuel, Flora. Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010. Shore, Stephen. Uncommon places. New York: Aperture, 1982. Treib, Marc. Spatial Recall: Memory in Architecture and Landscape. New York; London: Routledge, 2009. Tzonis, Alexander, and Phoive Giannise. Classical Greek Architecture: The Construction of the Modern. Paris: Flammarion, 2004. Vesely, Dalibor, “The Architectonics of Embodiment,” in Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, edited by George Dodds, Robert Tavernor, and Joseph Rykwert, 28-43. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002.
Image Credits Robert Frank. “Americans 38. Baber shop through screen door,” McClellanville, South Carolina, 1955. Stephen Shore. “Twenty-first and Spruce Streets,” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 21, 1974. John Hejduk. Victims Site Plan, 1986. Robert Franks, “Trolley,” New Orleans, 1955. Robert Franks, “Men’s Room, Railway Station,” Memphis, Tennessee, 1955. Stephen Shore, “Second Street East and South Main Street,” Kalispell, Montana, August 22, 1974. Stephen Shore,“El Paso Street,” El Paso, Texas, July 5, 1975. John Hejduk, Victims Sketches, 1986. Mateo Arquitectura, Development of Ullastret. Ullastret, Spain, 1985. Plan of Athenian Agora, Athens, Greece, 6th century BC Fatehpur Sikri Palace Plan, Fatehpur Sikri, Uttar Pradesh, India, 1569. E.H. Bone, “Five Men and a Young Boy by Large Vegetable Baskets,” 1940-1950. E.H. Bone, “Smiling Man Stands in Front of a Building or Warehouse,” 1920’s. E.H. Bone, “View from Behind of W. Caldwell Speaking to a Crowd of People,” 1944. E.H. Bone, “Line of Cars on university Avenue Business District,” 1953.
E.H. Bone, “Tiny Photo of Horseback Riders in the Parade,” 1940. E.H. Bone, “McCrory’s Store in Downtown Gainesville,” 1940-1950.
Acknowledgments Many thanks to Martin Gundersen for the guidance and support and for making every meeting feel like a really good therapy session, and to Bradley Walters for asking the simplest and most important questions and forcing me to think. To Nina Hofer and Mark McGlothlin for your perspectives. To Melissa, Lorin, Kim, Zee, Paul and Robert who always amaze me with their ideas, work, dedication, and thoughtfulness. To Martha and many other guardian angels who have looked out for me along the way. To my Mom and Dad, my family, Marco, and Donna, and to all my friends, who support me in my life. And finally, thank you to the great love that gives me so much more than I deserve.