Writing Sample

v.1.02

A collection of (2) works which accurately demonstrate my ability to clearly and rationally compose ideas, arguments, and questions with words.

AEM 03.2017 | 8� x 10�

Andrew Martens Pratt Institute B.Arch ‘17 James Bowie High School ‘12

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andrewemartens@gmail.com https://issuu.com/andrewmartens 512.909.6581 29 Spencer pl. #3R Brooklyn, NY, 11216

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[SO] Passive Aggressive

[So] Passive Aggressive is the research component for the degree project produced by myself and Emily Hertzberg, and in that respect, this work is collaborative. The project statement (exhibited here) outlines both the root elements which led to our proposal, as well as an early iteration of that proposal itself, which, though it has been altered, remains largely true to our final proposal.

For the complete document, see the Thesis Research booklet located at (https://issuu.com/ andrewmartens)

Critic(s) Ostap Rudakevych & Tulay Atak [4]

Above - Cows on the outskirts of the city, c. 1930 [p.c. Tampa Pix] Below - Ybor tobacco processing room, c. 1930 [p.c. Ybor2.org] [5]

This project is founded on a base-consideration of the atmosphere as a ves-

sel that carries, transmits and expresses individual traits and qualities which are integral to a rigorous definition and contemplation of a site. The atmosphere is not a force, but rather a medium for forces. As the atmosphere is ever-present, so too are its affiliate passengers and their myriad actions, although their effects are not made known to us in equilateral measures. The intention of this project is to elucidate the presence of those trace particles which are silently present on site by observing their impression on the form and program of an architecture that is designed receive them; a facilitation of a dynamic negotiation between two bodies of gaseous matter, framed as a negotiation between two architectural conditions.

The first body of gaseous matter is what’s commonly referred to as the “inte-

rior atmosphere”. HVAC is a silently crucial component in most contemporary structures, to varying degrees of rigor. For instance, a hospital may require a system which allows for quarantines, sequestrations, and siphons of air flow from one subspace to another. comparatively, a residential house needs only an operable dial denoting “hot” or “cool”. Generally, the interior atmosphere as a macro-concept speaks to whatever discrepancies may be found between the air in the room you are in now, and the air which is beyond, that being the atmosphere, which is the second body of gaseous matter in question.

The atmosphere, a broad subcategory of nature, or natural matter. The dichot-

omy between these two bodies is representative of the conflict inherent between a human infrastructure and that which is “other”. However, central facets of the con-

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trast between the interior atmosphere and the actual atmosphere do not have the luxury of sensorial indication; forest fires, monsoons, and earthquakes for example are all instantly perceivable, exceptional circumstances of individual character notwithstanding. In contrast to this, the particulate contents of an atmosphere require a medium to be observed. This project posits an architecture which is designed to perform as this medium, without neglecting a more conventional understanding of architecture. This is accomplished through a process of gradation which casts the air (or at least its hidden contents) as willing conspirators in the degradation and eventual ruination of the initial architectural proposal.

The programmatic tendency of the proposal in its initial form tends toward

broader concepts of curation, collection and preservation of objects - plants specifically. The curated object is in a state of suspension, and this state is sacred. The programmatic agency of the proposal is initially akin to the agency of the common model of the mammalian lung. Like a pair of lungs, the integrity of the object within the vessel bears a great deal of significance to the host. That which is contained within the lungs is, quite literally, one’s livelihood. The process of ruination superimposed on this condition cedes control of the object from the interior atmosphere and returns it in stages to the exterior atmosphere, and the discrepancies between the two are reflected on the object’s evolving forms, conditions, and overall composition.

Greenhouses are singular as a programmatic type. The greenhouse rep-

resents the imposition of an “unnatural” regimen - an agenda propagated by mankind for mankind’s own purposes - on a “natural” object - an object which is derived from nature, unprocessed. In the case of the greenhouse, this object is in

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the natural subcategory of “flora”. As in a garden, which is essentially a less rigorous iteration of the greenhouse, this imposition divorces plants from the standard process and nature of being of the larger conception of flora. The greenhouse then is an ark, and in its basic state it engages heavily with the tense relationship between the interior atmosphere and the real atmosphere. This drama is furthered by the presence of the object of the greenhouse, the preservative artifact. It is furthered more still by the specific conditions of the real atmosphere on the site.

Tampa Bay, an inlet on the Gulf of Mexico in Western Florida is the home to the

city of Tampa, a mixed-economy, medium-density metropolitan area.

Tampa’s early history intimately involves spaces which predate, yet still por-

tend to the contemporary interior atmosphere. As the self-proclaimed “Cigar Capital of the World”, the city grid is dotted with industrial infrastructure which lent itself to the production and moderation of processed tobacco in high quantities. The product itself as well as its production method have strong ties to atmospheric regulation, albeit to very different ends and by very different means than those which govern the modern interior atmosphere. Additionally, Tampa falls into a region of the United States (specifically the Southeastern) which is affected by a common air condition, which is the presence of sulfur dioxide in large volumes. Column masses of the substance can become denser in this region than any other in the united states. The importance of this is sulfur dioxide’s role as a chief conspirator in the formation of acid rain, a common form of erosion on man-made forms.

The goal for this project is to exploit the silent presence of this material in the

air to represent the tension between the nature of Tampa’s infrastructural atmosphere and the nature of Tampa’s actual atmosphere.

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Ruin Porn and the Retooling of 21st Century Naturalism

This Essay theorizes the role of ruins and infrastructural artifacts in the young millenium’s yet-tobe-determined cannonization and redefinition of that which is bucollic, picturesque, and “natural”.

I outline the linneage of representational tactics associated with ruins, leading to their frequent inclusion in contemporary media - with an emphasis on videogames - and elucidate how this newfound cultural passion for the maintenance of infrastructural artifacts, the “ruinnessance”, will be pivotal in retooling the common conception of nature and ecology, and their respective relationships with our own infrastructure.

Critic(s) Cathryn Dwyre [10]

Above: Lebbeus Woods - Radical Reconstruction Below: Bethesda Softworks - Fallout 3 [11]

The modern age presents a new conflict between humanity and nature, assuming of course that we are willing to view these as independent entities. Where in millennia past we would see nature as something to escape from, now one processes nature with an urge to reclaim, revitalize, restore, etc. Hot-words such as these have come to perpetuate a popular concept of nature, which would portend some secret wilderness which exists just beyond the frame, and is in constantly dire straits. The late 19th and early 20th century finds mankind developing itself in waves of excess as an insulating tactic, which reveals itself as an intricate, increasingly encompassing fabric of commodification; a mitigation of the previously canonical dichotomy between man and wilderness. Large scale manufacturing operations redefine Western Europe and the United States. Patterns of increase in urbanity trivialize the plight of the rural dweller. Through millennia past, the paradigm of human-nature interrelations necessitated a degree of caution when dealing with the environment; a caution which we have since had no need for. We have witnessed the advent of many burgeoning technologies which have stunted the gravitas surrounding the struggle against nature on many fronts: draughts are measurable, and water is rationed accordingly; communities fortify themselves against blizzards and torrential thunderstorms. volcanic eruption radii are monitored for even the slightest amount of activity. The twilight of the industrial revolution found us ensconced in this excess. However, the dawn of the Anthropocene, it would seem, has left the validity of such an interpretation of ecology highly suspect. Rather, we may benefit from a more pragmatic contemplation of a global biome which is mired in an overgrowth of mechanics and regulation. Indeed the primary category in which we cede ground appears to be in the generation and/or emergence of Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects1, be they dissonant economic structure or nuclear fallout. In the 15th century, Ferdinand II of Aragon initiated the cultivation of an unexplored hemisphere. The irreplicability of this act is hugely symbolic of the absence of 100 percent proof flora and fauna as real entities within the discourse of locating a new nature. The reality of humanity’s long-exposure effect on the planet begs a recontextualization of the human object. Using contemporary branches of speculative realism as a sort of latticework,one may say that our own objects hold the capacity to perform “naturally” when

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divorced from their functional contexts. We must then speculate as to when (or indeed, if) “nature” and “ruin” will exist in the public lexicon as synonyms, deployed simply to describe space which exists outside of any developmental progress.

Theorist Andreas Huyssen has a very specific understanding of what constitutes a ruin. In his 2006 paper, “Nostalgia for Ruins”, he asserts that all ruins are tied to some sort of socio-economic status imposed by us, their perpetual curators, and that this creates an issue within the realm of authenticity. Specifically, Huyssen argues that the logic of modern capitalism rejects the authentic ruin in Western culture, and in several cases this seems plausible. Ancient sites worldwide have attained a certain airbrushed quality. Luxor’s temples from the Egyptian empire are laced with high-watt lighting systems; mud bricks are neatly stacked in arrangements that are evocative of the original spatial intention. The Alamo in San Antonio has running water, air conditioning, and, on an aside, an annoying no-hat/ sunglass policy. In examples such as these, Huyssen may be correct in stating that “the chance for things to age and to become ruin has diminished in the age of turbo-capitalism.” Examples such as Luxor or the Alamo are less representative of a condition of detritus and more representative of an enterprise. Huyssen’s assertions on the distinction between the generation of ruin and the generation of rubble, and the disproportionate presence of the latter in modern history, also appear sensible. Sites from World War II Dresden to modern day Syria are more evocative of a condition of outright obliteration than of fracture and subsequent return to nature.

One point of discussion wherein Huyssen stumbles is his heavy-handed dismissal of the presence of the ruin in western modernity. In his concluding paragraph, Huyssen states, “the present is an age of preservation, restoration, and authentic remakes, all of which cancel out the idea of the authentic ruin which has itself become historical.” He assumes that a portion of the definitive authenticity of the ruin lies in its independence from some indeterminate sociopolitical structure, which, he maintains, is an impossibility in the current capitalist climate. The validity of the insinuation here made is contingent upon a belief in the indivisible fastening of the ruin to a set of cultural and/or sociological conditions. This can be read as an attempt to imbue the ruin with some grandiose ties to a societal ideal. Huyssen’s ruin is characterized as something much more than a typological condition. The appropriateness of this is debatable, especially within the context of modern move[13]

ments of philosophical thought appropriated for an architectural context. Underneath the umbrella of the Object Oriented Ontologists, wherein writers such as Graham Harman reside (with theorists such as Timothy Morton on retainer),We find that this argument begins to lose its potency. Huyssen’s interpretation of the authentic ruin relies on a projection of humanist values onto the site in question, and through this logic of interconnectivity, we lose the ability to divorce the literal conditions of a structure from its cultural connotation. In his essay Architecture without Nature, Morton states, “rather than this game of overwhelming one thing with another thing, I suggest instead that we think relations (Nature, web, network) as ontologically secondary to things.” This approach is fundamentally antithetical to Huyssen’s case.

Morton advocates for us to interpret ruins not as objects married to a set of invisibly welded conditions of culture and ownership, but rather simply as objects, with conditions of being placed only as a sort of generative process, rather than a defining trait.

The logic of this outlook is beneficial for us here because it privileges conditions of spatiality, rather than conditions of social or cultural construct. Huyssen also places a large stake on the guarantee of longevity. The potential for a ruin to become something other becomes a disqualifying trait. Kisho Kurakawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower has been in a state of extreme disrepair for decades on end. This project then would exemplify an object which reflects the absence of a subject by virtue of its state of being. However, this stagnating period of its existence is surely in its final hours, as Tokyo developers salivate at the site of its non-functioning footprint. And here, it would seem Huyssen’s logic loses its immediate rationality. To Huyssen, The tower’s fleeting future may catapult it into a typological grey zone wherein it mustn’t be ruin, while simultaneously it is definitively not capable of fluid function. In this way, the finality of Huyssen’s statement on the authentic ruin as a ruin itself appears to gloss over multiple viable cases which would beg review.

Through his praise of Piranesi, Huyssen also exposes a minor hypocrisy. He refers to Piranesi’s etchings as the “authentic imaginary of ruins”, and in fact goes on to pronounce them ruins themselves in a kaleidoscopic usage of the term. To address the first sentiment, Huyssen establishes a precedent of ruins as objects that must exist without a human agenda. Specifically, he takes issue with the intertwining of ruin and economy, but here he ignores the fact that the etchings we see from Piranesi are precisely rendered and expressive of singular statements. This is to say that they carry the very same connotations of some proposed ideological insinuation as [14]

does the Coliseum or the Parthenon. Past this, his assumption that the imaginary of ruins is a study lying in decay seems to betray a lack of interest in the exploration of the ruin through mediums beyond etchings. For instance, contemporary video game culture has worked itself into a prevailing fascination with the ruin as an architectural typology, with many of the largest and most critically acclaimed titles exploring similar “imaginaries”, which either feature ruins as a backdrop for an accompanying narrative, as in the destitute catacombs and crypts of the Uncharted Series, or qualify ruins themselves as primary players, as in the sparse and suspicious abandon of the temples and watchtowers of Shadow of the Colossus.

In Todd Howard’s 2008 title Fallout 3, we as the player are inserted into a landscape characterized by obscene amounts of decay and decrepitude. Sub-plots and minor characters dot the horizon, but the primary focus of the game is dependent on the player’s will and ability to tread further and further into the desolation.

Plodding unflinchingly onward here is a curious inclination. In an NPR Interview, the creative directors for the hugely revered title Journey spoke to the relativity of freedom in games. notably, they described all games as being as simple as a metaphorical carrot on a stick. The cleverness of the design is located in answering the question of how enticing one can continue to make said carrot appear, in order to stimulate a lasting interest. Fallout 3 relies on the player’s interest in maintaining a solitary and singular relationship with the landscape. The landscape in and of itself is Fallout 3’s carrot.

The prevalence of this design culture in games could be interpreted as a longing for a return to the previously detailed relationship with nature which relied on an analog response to danger. Nowhere in the network of national parks or wildlife reserves of North America can one locate a moment of uncurated exposure to the elements. Through the possession of an assumed avatar, Huyssen’s “imaginary of ruins” is a visage rendered with crystalline detail, experienced in a way that is typologically consanguineous to Piranesi’s etchings.

Similar to the meticulous crags and crevices which cumulatively form the texture of Piranesi’s Carceri D’invenzione or Hadrian’s Villa, The locales within the wasteland posit themselves as naturally disheveled and unkempt. However, the reality is the exact opposite. These are heaps of stylization, not heaps of rubbish as we would be lead to believe. And yet these projects share several planes of common ground. Firstly we can assert that they posit a rendering of indisputable grime [15]

in tandem. secondly, we can assert that they both exist as projects which Huyssen would classify as “imaginaries”. Here we should revert to a previously mentioned point of discourse. The presence of an aesthetic agenda is woven thickly into the fiber of the objects here on display, Huyssen had previously established as a point of contention with the proposition of ruins in modernity.

In The Object Turn: A Conversation, Todd Gannon opines that classical composition “ultimately led to hierarchical, static objects and critically attacking objects ultimately produced homogeneous rubble”. The benefit of the Object Oriented Ontology becomes apparent here. By virtue of the asserted logic of OOO, the ruins of Fallout 3 breathe as objects which do not reflect their methods of creation, curation, etc. As such, we are then potentially liberated to observe their function as independent aesthetic entities in a state of rapid decay.

In Lebbeus Woods’ proposed Sarajevo project, one may observe an uncanny parallel between Woods’ drawings and a notable outpost of civilization within the world of fallout, known as Megaton. Megaton is a makeshift township established in a fortress of crumpled and rusting aircraft parts. Wings, tails, and plane bodies are amalgamated roughly along the profile of the settlement to form a bristling barrier of rivets, rotors, and other general oxidizing metals. It is both reflective of a more globalized world that existed pre-holocaust and highly evocative of the culture of scrounging that is promoted through the lore of the game world. With roots as early as the handheld Pokemon titles of the late 1990s, many games have concerned themselves with the collection and consumption of randomly strewn resources. Contemporary projects such as Media Molecule’s Little Big Planet, feature this aspect of design as a core function, asking the player to participate in incremental acts of fortification through a wide procedure of acquisition of tools and artifacts.

Typologically, this trait is startlingly similar to several of Woods’ drawings from the aforementioned series, which depict thin jagged lacings of shrapnel and battered and beaten Warcraft conglomerating to form massive structures shrouded in a thick coat of highly curated putrefaction. Here too then, can we observe an imaginary of ruin. Woods’ devotion to conscious detail, much like the games previously mentioned, finds him issuing commendable levels of precision in order to illustrate conditions which perform antithetically to their methods of production. And yet Huyssen maintains that ruins themselves as a genuine typology of structure are in a state of decay.

In a paper entitled “The World is Not Enough”, Erik Ghenoiu ponders the potential use[16]

fulness of interpreting objects as the nuclei of various independent worlds of existence. This is in many ways a summation for how we might observe the ruin, and, as one may hypothesize, a contemporary appropriation of “nature” as a term and entity. The slow decay of objects elicits a pocket ecology of sorts, which perseveres even in the face of modernity.

In his 1963 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick on several occasions chronicles the presence of an assumed biological process which leads to the formation of kipple, a cutesy term for the glacially paced collection of junk in the crevices of society. Though the mystically presented “I don’t know, it just happens” logic that this posits is fun and relatable, it is also somewhat dismissive as a train of thought. These objects are assigned an air of inconspicuousness and no attempt is made to account for their presence. It would seem that the true nature of such stock-piling is something driven with purpose. The word “nature” is deployed here with some level of tact. To qualify the ruin as a natural object, one must qualify stagnation as a conceivable nature of “things”. This stagnation, the processes that it implicates, and the overarching conditions it yields, provide us with a contemporary logic for the classification of ruins. The production of, and exposure to, themes of the imaginary of ruins is, if anything, peaking by virtue of the continued enrichment of the communities of filmmaking and game design. The ability to experience a condition which may be quantified as “natural” flourishes through increasingly vivid experiences of virtual contact. It may be that nature as a term is caught up in a sort of identity crisis. However, through OOO’s destruction of a connotative hierarchy, we may well be capable of asserting the man-made ruin as a natural object, eliminating the pitfalls of outdated sentimentalism in the process.

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