BARCH, BFA Rhode Island School of Design
ALEXANDER MCCARGAR
Precisely because it was Barely Adumbrated The contemporary museum and the state of preservation
Roman Forum Degree Project, RISD
The institution of the museum is disintegrating. In the last quarter century, it has attempted to leave it’s own walls, to generate activity over passivity, but while doing this it has not been able to let go of the white walls it attempts to leave. The contemporary museum has no collection and no galleries. The first of three contradictions. While it shifts to acknowledge a global culture connected through the digital realm, it also necessitates a deeper connection to physical site when the neutrality of its white box galleries is rejected. It can not ignore where it is. The visitors’ interactions with one another and with place, become art. Sited within the Roman Forum, the project re-establishes a line of inhabitation discarded when the ruins were “preserved” and made a spectacle. Their existence in a simultaneous state of construction and deconstruction is re-achieved and maintained. The “new” aims to preserve what exists, but still allows disintegration and imagination. Preservation is a continued growth and further decay, not a freezing. This relationship establishes the second contradiction propelling the project to continuously establish and invalidate itself. With no galleries or storage facilities, the museum becomes a series of living and working spaces. Hotel rooms for the visitor, studios for the artist, offices for curators and shop for the conservator. Each is woven into a new set of relationships that can not be accurately predicted and thus not entirely designed for, setting up the third and final contradiction.
Found Chair (s)
A discarded chair was systematically deconstructed and each member sawn in half. Each set of half parts were then reassembled, resulting in two chairs. Each chair is a full product in itself resulting from the deconstruction of the original. This study aims to invert our idea of deconstruction and to test our initial perceptions. Like a stage set, depending on view, the chairs appear as two halves or two wholes while both remain a full and half object.
Site
Main Station
Town Center
461.30
454.30 Aula
Foyer 453.50
Turnhalle
L채ngsschnitt 1:200
Lampion Competition Hurst Song Architekten
Altdorf, Switzerland
The main program was a gymnasium and small auditorium for an expanding primary and middle school. The proposal saw the two main programmatic elements as floating lanterns that could be pulled together by the secondary program and circulation. The lanterns allows for a maxiumun amount of light to enter the spaces while still allowing privacy from the heavily trafficked surrounding area. The interiors utilize a laminated lumber construction which forms a series of vertical fins sheathed in glass. During the day, the facade mirrors the nearby mountains and at night projects light when the spaces are in use.
449.30
Umkleider채ume
Duschen
3.1 Aula 197 m²
2.6 Lehrerzi 32 m²
3.7 Material 45 m²
4.2 Hausw 13m²
4.5 Aus 21 m² 3.2 Künstler Gard 17 m²
3.8 Putzrm. 14 m²
3.5 Küche 20 m²
3.6 WC 10 m²
3.4 Foyer Aula 82 m²
2.1 Foyer Sporthalle 98 m²
5.1 Gedeckter Vorplatz 36 m²
5.5 Pausenplatz
3.6 WC 10 m²
5.1 Gedeckter Vorplatz 49 m²
Gard.
5.2 Mofa- und Velounterstand
1.1 Dreifach Turnhalle 1372 m²
28
9 5.3 Autoabstellplätze
1
8
N
Erdgeschoss 1:200
Creative Arts Center and Student Dormitories Providence, RI
Located in the heart of downtown Providence, the project links two main pedestrian streets with an urban passage. The program incorporates a 200 bed dormitory for RISD, a perfromance hall, multiple galleries and studios and mixed use spaces for dance, installations and musical study. The structure itself serves as a means of integrating the public into the academic atmosphere and more open dialogue within the institution. Practice and studio spaces have sectional overlaps and small gallery spaces occur as extensions off circulation spaces.
The ground level begins as two separate entrances- one for dormitory and studio spaces and one for the performance hall and main public gallery spaces. One the third level the two entities meet, sparking interactions which on the seventh level are completely united with performance spaces used by both the school, nearby Brown University and the local community.
West-side branch Library Providence, RI The library occupies a modest site but aims to serve as a catalyst for larger, cognizant growth in the west-side of Providence, offering multiple forms of invitation. The street facade is less than one full story tall in order to make visible a garden which spills into the unused backyard of a cluster of houses. The main entrance is located through an existing shopfront which the library inhabits. The essence of the older building breathes through the new spaces to give the library a scale that is familiar to the neighborhood. A jewel box on one busy corner of the lot creates a transparency that further sparks curiosity and provides answers.
European Honors Program Rome, Italy RISD’s European Honors Program (EHP) accepts 25 students for 6 month sessions to complete independent work in the Palazzetto Cenci in Rome. Informed by Umberto Eco’s writings on Hyperreality, I began to draw parts of the city and reconstruct them through drafted drawings based solely on my sketches. The accuracy of my hand and the bias of my perception were tested and the seemingly measured drafted drawings began to inform a new reality.
Woven Felt Stool Prototypes, recycled felt, pine
Furniture and Material Exploration
Collapsible Dining Chair, birch plywood