Gump Record - Fall 2013 by Blake Montieth

FA LL 2013

We often use categories to quickly describe and understand each other; these categories carry expectations and limitations. The life of an "architecture student," for example, is expected to revolve around various assigned projects. But, where are the opportunities for reflection and independent exploration? Can a student be defined by more than their assignments? These are questions that drive our team. In this second semester of existence, we challenged our peers to investigate unique interests beyond assigned projects. The results were refreshing. This is a collection of these investigations by students, and one professor, from UNC Charlotte's School of Architecture. By publishing this record of investigations, we hope to inspire other students to share their hidden interests with the world!

TABLE O F CONTENTS

URBAN ABANDONDED | CARLOS LEONARDO

Sub-Cultures and Architectural Dissonance Subcultural Gestalt The Urb and the Ex A Provocateur’s Applique S C A N D I N AV I A N KO L L E K T I V

Denmark - Intimacy Norway - Contrast Sweden - Memory Finland - Incompleteness O B S E R V AT I O N S O N P E R C E P T I O N | E V A N D A N C H E N K A

49er Sound and Experience Fragments of Experience Modes of Perception Body at the Center W R I T I N G A N D B U I L D I N G B L A C K U TO P I A N I S M | C H A R L E S D AV I S

Representing the “Architextural” Musings of June Jordan’s His Own Where (1971) C O N T E M P L AT I N G E N G A G E M E N T S | D A K O TA P A H E L- S H O R T

Introduction to Engagements Necessary Engagements Discovered Engagements Distracted Engagements FROM INDIA TO ADHOC | BLAKE MONTIETH T H E A C T O F M A K I N G | N AT E W E B S T E R

Introduction to Making Risky Business Discovery and Assembly Mix & Mingle: Merging the Acts of Design and Construction NEXT STEPS

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UR BA N A BA N DO NED

SUB-CULTURES AND ARCHITECTURAL DISSONANCE

SUBCULTURAL GESTALT

THE URB AND THE EX

A PROVOCATEUR’S APPLIQUE

CARLOS L EONARDO

CARLOS LEONARDO

SU B - CULTUR ES AND A R C HITECTURAL DISS ON AN CE When we consider the existing state of abandoned works of architecture, the components that predicated their overall demise are somewhat peripheral in nature. While they were once teaming with purpose and people, we now accept them as oddities of urbanism, throwaways of society, remnants of the capricious kind of socio-economic provocations that often leave countless individuals displaced or disenfranchised. Still, our forefingers fight for position, eager to point out the various means and manners by which the present conditions of these buildings have been defined. Their very subsistence indicates that the anthropomorphic relationships that exist between the architecture and the individual are tenuous, subjective, and conditional. When we qualify these buildings as being abandoned, we infer, through our understanding of design intent, that there are quantifiable absolutes associated with occupying a space. Most of these buildings are designed with such specialized programmatic spaces that they lack the flexibility to adapt to changing technologies, spatial requirements, and divergences in occupational specificity. From this, one could reason that once a building ceases to function as it was intended, or lacks the capacity for programmatic deviation, it is lost and wanting of purpose. Doors that do not open, windows that let light in for no one, and stairs that lay in wait all start to paint a picture of the extrapolated utilitarian absence within these spaces. Without the human element present to intercede, these buildings begin to exist in varying degrees of decay and decomposition, fending off the natural elements to which they will inevitably submit.

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CARLOS LEONARDO

URBAN ABANDONED

011

It is during this process, as the forms of the buildings begin to acquiesce, that their functions are continuously redefined by the various sub-cultures within their urban context. Like any true oddity, the draw is in the way these structures capture an eschewed view of normative socio-cultural behaviors and functions. These unoccupied buildings solicit a particular set of individuals in search of these kinds of societal anomalies, and the potential of accessing their spaces can transform questions of curiosity into questions of legality. For an assemblage of artists, preservationists, and urban explorers, these buildings allow them to take a disused fragment of urban construct and frame it to meet their various artistic and archeological objectives. These buildings exist in half-lives of architectural dissonance. They operate as contemporary safe-havens for sub-cultures of society, while their creators keep a heavy thumb pressed firmly on the indexes of their time and place and purpose. By reexamining the relationship between abandonment and architecture we may better recognize these moments of cultural intervention expressed in the form of art and understanding. Throughout this reconsideration we will to question the nature of form, as it relates to a given time and place, once the connotations of its purpose become transient and irregular. As a derivative of our newly provoked awareness of these conditions of urban indifference, our apathy may turn into interest and we may find ourselves in accord with many of principles that govern the very sub-cultures that we aim to explore. |

CARLOS LEONARDO

SUBC ULT UR AL GESTALT

Cognitive Transgressions We find ourselves at a crossroad where curiosity and legality intersect and where the potential of occupying these abandoned buildings displaces any notions of consequence or danger. Here the individuals that constitute these independent subcultures will each draw a similar and initial determination: that by gaining access to these spaces, the wonderment of the architectural oddity supersedes any ambiguities of ownership, structural integrity, and societal regulations regarding privacy and property. This is the moment where judgment, intention, and reckless opportunity converge and the individual has made the conscious choice to occupy these buildings and fulfill their independent endeavors through their subsequent media. This, in turn, prompts the lines of legality to lose their continuity and become dashed, perforated points of slippage where by these individuals excuse their actions. The Preservationist Of all the sub-cultures that I will be exploring throughout this series, none is less invasive and more exacting on these abandoned buildings than the preservationists. They operated as watchful retainers cataloguing and keeping record of the individual constructs and object-types. For the preservationist of abandoned architecture, time is the arbiter through which they assess the spaces and objects found within. The Urban Explorer Like the preservationist, the urban explorer searches for clues about the past life of the building and its previous occupants. They are architectural archaeologists, commonly

URBAN ABANDONED

overturning objects in these spaces for a more invasive investigation of the artifacts. Large subsets of them become pickers and collectors, searching out these ruins looking for artifacts to take home with them with minimal invasiveness. The Photographer The Photographer functions as a quasi-preservationist/ explorer. Armed with a camera they venture into the oddity of these spaces in search of an expression of architecture, nature, and society. Through the lens of their camera they are able to collect entire rooms of artifacts without disturbing a single artifact. The photographer operates as a preservationist by default and moonlights as an explorer by design. The Urban Artist This, by far, has the potential to be the most invasive and self-indulgent sub-culture I will be investigating throughout this series. But, the urban also artist has the greatest ability to index the changes in time, occupant-based programing, and transformations through intervention. They deposit individual narratives about art, architecture, and society producing simultaneity of occupant-based moments. Projecting Inference Each of these subcultures can be simply defined by the distinct programmatic conclusions they project on to these abandoned constructs. But, by doing so we negate the possibility of future deliberation in regards to the positions they infer about their society. Additionally, while the physical impact they leave on these buildings ranges from reserved to reckless, the degree to which these individuals intervene on the site is largely based on their objective intent. By taking a more detailed examination, we may begin to redefine the roles they play in society through their art and contemplation. |

CARLOS LEONARDO

T HE UR B AND THE EX

Urban exploration occurs in a range of scales that vary widely from the benign, where look-but-donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t-touch is the modus operandi, to the malignant, where spaces have been tampered with, subtracted from and altered since their initial states of abandonment. The Urban Explorer searches for evidence about the past life of the buildings through the clues and artifacts found within the spaces that they occupy. Often, these individuals assume the role of an architectural archaeologist, discovering what information can be gained through the observation of artifacts. Commonly, objects are overturned and disturbed in these spaces for a more invasive investigation of the qualitative aspects of the space. Fortunately, the vast majority of Urban Explorers investigate with their eyes rather than their hands, thus ensuring that the spirit of the places that they discover and occupy are left whole for the enjoyment of others that are a part of these subcultural enclaves. The Individuals that form this community often, if not exclusively, share their explorations and discoveries through the media of photography and film. Their work is emblematic of the conflicts that have arisen between a continued conurbation and the subsequent increase in denied or restricted spaces within their urban environments. Broadly Defined, Urbex, a compounded term short-hand for Urban Exploration, is not exclusively limited to instances of urban decay and abandonment alone, but can also include the exploration of sewers, drains, rooftops, or any location in an urban environment that may, or may not, have restricted access. There is a collective understanding in the Urbexing

URBAN ABANDONED

CARLOS LEONARDO

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assemblies that, “nothing is restricted but everything is respected”. This is a fundamental component of how the subculture both operates and defines itself to those outside of its periphery of existence. The Urbex communities have a vast online presence where they share philosophical and Ideological viewpoints regarding abandoned buildings, the urban environment and the implications of exploration in general. Some sites go as far as to geo-tag specific locations that are keen for exploration and provide additional safety, ease of access, and experience level ratings, as well as lists of any hazardous materials that may be present at a given site. While these geo-tagging sites do exist, they are the exceptions and not the rule. It is a common assertion in the Urbex community that an individual’s investigation of an abandoned building is only half of the enjoyment; it is the active examination of the Individual’s urban landscape, and the mining of it for these gems of abandonment, that constitute the other half of the fully realized urban exploration experience. Individuals who consider themselves Urbexers follow a somewhat dogmatic set of behavioral and communal standards when attempting to occupy and interact with an abandoned building or urban construct. For the ardent Urban Explorer being beholden to a shared set of community standards is equally as important as the act of exploration itself. |

CARLOS LEONARDO

A P R OVOC AT EUR ’S APPL IQUE

Like the Urban Explorers, the sub-culture of Urban Artists is comprised of a rather wide spectrum of individuals with varying degrees of intervention-types, each with differing intentions ranging from altruism to narcissism. Some “tag” quickly, randomly, and without thought in order to mark themselves in the urban landscape. While others, through their work, tempt us to question our very own existence as it relates to individual cultures, societies, and/or governments. In the most basic sense, the artists can be deemed to be nothing more than nuisances using surfaces of both public and private constructs in the urban environment as informal canvases to project their works onto. In the most literal sense they are vandals, breaking the well-established criminal laws and municipal ordinances that govern urban environments and society as a whole. Given this distinction, most Urban Artists operate shrouded in one form of anonymity or another, assuming false identities and using pseudonyms to identify themselves and thus maintain a sense of ownership over their works. Their presence can be felt woven into the very fabric of a society where they are simultaneously revered by some, and abhorred by most. To a majority of people, urban art is an unwelcome applique to the formal aspects of a given urban condition. However, to those individuals of the urban environment willing to look past matters of “appropriate placement” these works add to the conversation and elicit varying degrees of introspection and artistic debate. In the end, the Urban Artists fold into the collective consciousness of the particular place and time in which we find them.

URBAN ABANDONED

CARLOS LEONARDO

URBAN ABANDONED

These individuals, by far, have the greatest potential of being the most invasive, destructive, and self-indulgent of all the subcultures that we will explore. However, the Urban Artists also have the greatest ability of contributing to the greater good of society by indexing the changes in time and culture along with all of the variations in occupant-based programing and transformations through the thoughtful articulation of their works. These two competing views define the Urban Artist, but they are hopelessly in conflict and cannot be reconciled. A more careful analysis of this urban phenomenon, however, will allow us to bifurcate these contradictory opinions and afford the casual observer an opportunity to look at these individuals and their art forms through a different prism. As a result, these Urban Artists memorialize individual narratives regarding the art, architecture, and societal footprints of a given urban landscape and add to the collective dialog regarding the nature of a shared individualism, whereby an artist, having usurped all manner of conventional deliberation, engages the collective of an urban environment into an ongoing conversation expressed through the medium of their work. There is a prevailing implication that graffiti and street art are not “really art”. That somehow there is distinction between them that elevates one over the other. But it is and they are. What constitutes as “art” is amorphous and immeasurable while simultaneously quantifiable and well defined. A convenient contradiction, of sorts, that mimics the implications of these expressions of shared individualism between the collective of an urban condition and the individualism of the artist’s expression. |

S CA N DINAVIA N KO L L EKT IV

DENMARK INTIMACY

NORWAY CONTRAST

SWEDEN MEMORY

FINLAND INCOMPLETENESS

SUMMER 20 13

SUMMER 2013

SC AND INAVIA N KOL L EK TIV

Introduction From our first moments on Earth, inchoate senses begin our cognitive repository of multi-sensory interactions. We embark on a lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s journey of spatial understanding and empathetic comprehension. The unexplainable pleasure and contentment attainable through environment and interpersonal relationships feeds our human curiosity and inspires new discoveries. The Nordic world manifests this interdependent sense of community and being to which we yearn to belong, and, thus to which we are called to belong. Nordic architecture and landscape engages our own person and lets us easily fulfill our role as environmental participants as part of a unifying community. Though the world is characterized by a cyclical evolution that continues to create and forget, Nordic architecture and landscape continually evolves with cultural origins still held close and respected. In a sense, the Nordic world provides the benediction of self-acceptance of our own past as we look forward to an unknown future. The myriad thoughts expressed in writing and photography reflect not only our literal surroundings but the Nordic evolution so similar to our own. As we interpreted each countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abstract theme, we not only explored architectural conditions in an engaging environment, but we embraced our own evolving selves.

KOLLEKTIV

D E NM AR K - INT IM ACY

“Our culture of control and speed has favored the architecture of the eye, with its instantaneous imagery and distant impact, whereas haptic architecture promotes slowness and intimacy, appreciated and comprehended gradually as imagery of the body and skin.” -Juhani Pallasmaa “Hapticity and Time: Notes on Fragile Architecture”

KOLLEKTIV

D E N M A R K I S N O T O N LY A B L E T O A P P R E C I AT E T H E I N D I V I D U A L S WITHIN THE COMMUNITY BUT ALSO INDIVIDUALISM WITHIN ARCHITECTURE. - A LY S S A N E L S O N | P H O T O B Y : S E A N G I L L E S P I E

SUMMER 2013

T H E P E O P L E O F C O P E N H A G E N A R E W H AT M A K E T H E C I T Y F E E L C L O S E A N D P E R S O N A L , A L L F R I E N D LY A N D W E L C O M I N G T O OTHERS. - M O N I C A W H I T M I R E | P H OTO BY: J U S T Y N A B E R N A C K I

A B O V E | P H O T O B Y : R YA N G LY N N B E LO W | P H OTO BY: C H R I S T I N C H L E B D A

KOLLEKTIV

N OR WAY - CONT R A ST

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Norwegian place is above all determined by the tension of above and below; here, things exist not in harmonic presence within comprehensive space but instead participate in the environmental interplay of forces. To reveal and maintain this in building requires forms that simultaneously possess the safety of home and express the indefinite and savage environment.â&#x20AC;? -Christian Norberg-Schulz Nightlands: Nordic Building

SUMMER 2013

OSLO ALLOWS FOR SLOWNESS AND SILENCE WITHIN A LOCAL S I T E W H I L E F E E L I N G C O N N E C T E D T O A L A R G E R I D E N T I T Y. - H A N K S C H E L L E N G E R | P H O T O B Y : E M I LY B O O N E

KOLLEKTIV

T H E B U I L D I N G S A R E I N C R E D I B LY F R A G I L E A G A I N S T T H E P O W E R OF THE FJORDS. LIKE INNOCENT SHEEP, THEY HUDDLE TOGETHER I N T H E O N LY S H A D O W Y P O C K E T S W H E R E L I F E I S P O S S I B L E . T H E R E S P E C T O F “ P L A C E ” B U I LT T H E S E V I L L A G E S . - E VA N D A N C H E N K A | P H OTO BY N I CO L E B R O W N

A B O V E | P H OTO BY: J U L I A B A D O R R E K B E L O W | P H O T O B Y : R YA N G LY N N

KOLLEKTIV

S WEDEN - M EM O RY

“Architecture is essentially an art form of reconciliation and meditation, and in addition to settling us in space and place, landscapes and buildings articulate our experiences of duration and time between the polarities of past and future. In fact, along with the entire corpus of literature and the arts, landscapes and buildings constitute the most important externalization of human memory. We understand and remember who we are through our constructions, both material and mental.” -Juhani Pallasmaa “Space, Place, Memory and Imagination: The Temporal Dimension of Existential Space”

KOLLEKTIV

A R C H I T E C T U R E , N O L O N G E R A T R A N S L AT I O N F R O M T H E O R Y O R D I A G R A M , TA K E S O N F O R M A N D M AT E R I A L I T Y – I T S S O L I D S TAT E – T H E M I N U T E O N E L O G S I T. W H AT F O L L O W S I S A N AT T E M P T T O I N D I C AT E W H E R E W E A R E B Y M A P P I N G N O T D I S TA N C E T R A V E L E D O V E R T I M E A S L I N E A R C O N N E C T I O N S BETWEEN TWO POINTS BUT MAPPED AS A SERIES OF EVENTS WITHIN A FIELD OF FORCES. - S E A N G I L L E S P I E | P H OTO BY: S AVA N N A H D E W I T T

SUMMER 2013

S TO C K H O L M S E E M E D TO B E CO M P O S E D O F E X PA N S I V E V I E W S A N D L A R G E - S C A L E U N D E R S TA N D I N G W H I L E I M M E D I AT E LY C O N T R A S T E D B Y M O M E N T S O F I N T I M A C Y A N D A N T I C I P AT I O N ; A CITY FULL OF VISUAL CONNECTION AND COMPREHENSIVE C O H E S I O N B U T P H Y S I C A L LY D I V I D E D A N D I N T E R W O V E N W I T H L O C A L C U LT U R E S A N D P E R S O N A L I T I E S . - H A N K S C H E L L E N G E R | P H OTO BY: M O N I C A W H I T M I R E

A B O V E | P H OTO BY: J E S S I E N U T Z B E LO W | P H OTO BY: A D A M A N Z I V I N O

KOLLEKTIV

FI N LA ND - INCOM PL ETEN ESS

â&#x20AC;&#x153;In Finland, things are experienced as possibilities, and the goal is to reveal the hidden. All of these modes have their origin in the mythic geography of the North, which humans must understand through participation in order to obtain a meaningful interaction.â&#x20AC;? -Christian Norberg-Schulz Nightlands: Nordic Building

SUMMER 2013

A WORK OF ART IS COMPLETE WHEN IT INVITES NO FURTHER I N T E R P R E TAT I O N . F I N N I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E R E M A I N S V I B R A N T AND LIVING BECAUSE OF ITS INCOMPLETENESS WHICH A L LOW S O C C U PA N T S TO CO N T I N U E TO R E I N V E N T A N D A D D TO THE WORK. - E M I LY B O O N E | P H O T O B Y : J O S H K I E B

KOLLEKTIV

T H E D E E P - R O O T E D C U LT U R A L C O N N E C T I O N T O T H E L A N D , E S P E C I A L LY I N F I N L A N D , S E E M S T O R E S U LT I N T H E S E K I N D O F A R C H I T E C T U R A L R E S P O N S E S T H AT A L L O W T H E N AT U R A L SURROUNDINGS TO ENGAGE IN DIALOGUE WITH THE BUILDINGS T H E M S E LV E S , A N D A S A R E S U LT , W I T H T H E I N H A B I TA N T S . - C A R LY C O AT E S | P H O T O B Y : N AT H A N A A R O N S O N

O B S E RVAT IONS O N P ER C EP T IO N

49ER SOUND AND EXPERIENCE

FRAGMENTS OF EXPERIENCE

MODES OF PERCEPTION

BODY AT THE CENTER

EVAN DANCHEN K A

E VA N D A N C H E N K A

4 9 E R SO UND AND EX PERIENCE

First, I share my observations of the very first 49ers football game, and the historical significance of stadium noise. If you attended the inaugural Charlotte 49ers football game, you probably felt a continuous barrage of sound hitting your body. The studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; anxious roars and giddy shrieks set the tone for the monumental occasion. When I asked exiting crowd members what was most memorable about the game, I heard mentions of the green and gold crowd, the flag ceremony, descriptions of big plays, the drum line, the football players, and jokes they made with their friendsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but hardly any mention of the stadium itself. I was not hoping to hear praise of the stadium. Though many visual and structural masterpieces are scattered across the world, the majority of stadiums are known for the experiences that happen within, and not for their architecture. This does not mean that the design of a stadium (or any building) is inconsequential so long as it is functional, but that its success is highly attributed to the experiences it plays host to. A stadium is a symbol for those moments. Without this concrete-and-turf bowl in the ground at UNC Charlotte, thousands of people would never have had the experiences that were made possible on that first game. The player who scored the first touchdown now has a story to tell for the rest of his life. Strangers sitting near each other have new friendships to forge. A collective memory is bound to that stadium forever. How significant the pieces of that memory are depends on the person, but they are undeniable and many more will follow.

O B S E R V AT I O N S O N P E R C E P T I O N

In his book Noise, David Hendy, Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Sussex, describes an archetypal scene at the Roman Colosseum: “[The audience] would experience a full panoply of sensory thrills: the smell of blood and sweat and perfume; the sight of death and the flash of weapons; the sound of trumpets and drums; the screams of victims; and, above all else, the roar of the crowd.” Hendy goes on to explain the historical implications of sound in ancient-to-modern stadiums. A leader can reach all his people in voice, but a collective voice can also rise over rulers. Memorized chants, call-and-answer phrases, and piercing whistles all work together to represent a majority body. On the Saturday afternoon of the first 49ers football game, a majority body came together in a collective voice and made itself known…well, heard, really. We have a new stadium to thank for this. |

E VA N D A N C H E N K A

F R A GM ENT S OF EX PERIEN CE

As I traveled Germany this summer, I developed two different sketching hands. One involved line in pen, a loose precision, and perspective depth. This hand was a recorder that made sense of the objects and geometries reaching my eyes. I call this my “empirical” sketch. My second hand involved a painterly stroke, gesture, depth, the illusion of light, and the implied. This hand expressed the essence of what the first one captured. I call this my “experiential” sketch. I often experimented with two sketches of the same scene, comparing the empirical with the experiential. When I made an empirical sketch first, the following experiential sketch was usually more successful. I drew quicker and with less precision, creating powerful renderings of the scenes before me. If I made the experiential sketch first and followed with the empirical one, I often made a muddy and confused first sketch and an impatiently rushed second one. I concluded that the empirical-to-experiential model was more successful for several reasons. The order of drawing is in sync with my brain’s comprehension. My brain and my hand work together to take in the overall surroundings, disseminate the details, and build a recognizable image. Once this empirical evidence is recorded (both on paper and in mind), I can ‘paint’ the elements of light, depth, and poché. The experiential sketch culminates in fragments of gestalt relationships and implied gestures. This approach to sketching is far more powerful than any other visual recorder for one crucial reason: this sketch is a representation of

E VA N D A N C H E N K A

Comprehension Point (working only on experiential)

Comprehension Point

Comprehension Point (working only on empirical)

Accumulation

Departure

Memory Empirical Timeline

Experiential Timeline

Direct Engagement

Memory Discovery

47 O B S E R V AT I O N S O N P E R C E P T I O N

Re-visit

Forgetting

Comprehension Point (working only on experiential)

Comprehension Point

Comprehension Point (working only on empirical)

Accumulation

Departure

Memory Empirical Timeline

Experiential Timeline

Direct Engagement

Memory Discovery

Additional Time

Re-visit

Forgetting

Memory Empirical Timeline

Experiential Timeline

Comprehension Point (working only on experiential)

Comprehension Point

Less Time Comprehension Point (working only on empirical)

Accumulation

Departure

Direct Engagement

Memory Discovery

Re-visit

Forgetting

E VA N D A N C H E N K A

choices. The author of those choices is using the fragments before him to build and convey a message. For the audience, we are captured by its allure. And if an author is especially keen at conveying his message, then we are made irresistibly curious. I think that architecture can be interpreted in the same model. During any length of time in a building, different amounts of both the empirical and the experiential are present in a person’s mind, all building up in fragments of memory. But a building is much more complex than a sketch, so what happens to a person’s fragmented interpretation over a long period of time? What happens when someone is no longer viewing and imploring the meaning of their surroundings, but is simply living and functioning in the building? Peter Zumthor writes in Thinking Architecture, “Although a work of architecture based on disharmony and fragmentation, on broken rhythms, clustering and structural disruptions may be able to convey a message, as soon as we understand its statement our curiosity dies, and all that is left is the question of the building’s practical usefulness (p.13).” Zumthor is saying that, yes, overtime the allure does fade and the message of the author of the space no longer matters. So, I hypothesize that a new message is built—one by the dweller. New fragments from his memory all come together in a subconsciously and consciously built message overtime. So concludes a cycle of living, breathing sketches beginning in an author’s empirical observations, their experiential interpretations and fragmented message, followed by a new subject’s allure, their empirical observations and reimagined message. |

O B S E R V AT I O N S O N P E R C E P T I O N

M OD ES OF PER C EP T ION

The phenomenological view, as defined by its champion philosopher Edmund Husserl, states that experience necessitates a complete “bracketing-off” of all excess, inconsequential events in order to reach a pure, unbiased, understanding of the empirical phenomena around us. To be clear, “bracketing-off” means that one must let all cultural, societal, and personal preconceptions completely fall away. One should be left with only a clear, empirical reading of the direct phenomena happening around them. With no greater implications in the way of understanding, one can achieve a pure reading of the world. For an example of such reading in architecture, take a project like Peter Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum in Cologne, Germany. When walking through the gallery of ruins, a true phenomenologist would focus on the temporal, observable elements: the light piercing through the articulated perforated wall, the touch and color of the angling wooden walkway, and the layered textures of the old and new stone. What the Husserl-phenomenologist would, in fact, let fall away are any greater implications that are unobservable in the moment. Phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty later questioned Husserl’s “bracketing” approach that left out and seemingly undermined historicism and any greater cultural, societal meanings. The multiplicity view, as written about by Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millenium, is an acceptance that everything has greater implications, and that everything in the world is irrefutably, though mostly distantly, tied. Our understanding is naturally, irreversibly based on preconceptions that we have accrued during our life on earth.

E VA N D A N C H E N K A

The necessary naïveté for a pure, Husserlian view of the world is already impossible just by being born into a world of biased circumstances and societal systems. Rather, the way in which people can recognize their shared and unshared experiences is what forms a rich plural understanding of the world. In architecture, we often hear the term collective memory. In this sense, Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum is deeply about the history and stories of the past that have brought it to what it is today. One goes to the museum to try to grasp and recall the fallen chapel of “Madonna in the Ruins,” and remembers the flattening obliterating destruction of the city from World War II. The building that was rebuilt with strong allusions to the past and with the values of its culture and people that tell the stories that become part of a collective memory through time (this is still awkward, reword) Imagination What is most exciting about both modes of understanding experience is how the imagination works in both. Imagination can be defined as the ability to take in what you perceive, to associate it with something more from your memory, and to then project a greater meaning back out. Imagination is a very powerful tool that lives between what you perceive and what you remember. The empirical (phenomenological) reading of the light coming through Kolumba’s walls might remind you of stars at night, and you might use your imagination to project an image of stars onto the walls before you. Likewise, the multiplicity reading of the ruins might remind you of other surviving Gothic cathedrals, and you might use your imagination to project the memory of being inside a cathedral up from the ruins beneath you. Put them together and you might even imagine a towering

O B S E R V AT I O N S O N P E R C E P T I O N

Gothic cathedral with stars shimmering through its windows, a kind of abstract fusing of phenomenological transparency and collective memory together. Gestalt and the Greater Whole In a way, imagination is really what gestalt theory is all about. Gestalt is when the perceived whole is greater than the sum of its parts--and that is what imagination is affording us. Without imagination, we could never read the implications of Zumthorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kolumba museum. We would only see rocks, materials, and columnsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the parts. We would see the order of columns, the layering of the ruins, and the fact that it all makes for a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the whole. But without imagination, we would never see the gestalt or the things we perceive that make the experience greater than even that entire sum of parts. Imagination and gestalt allow us to see the stars and the past cathedral. So it is not the imaginative architecture itself that is so impressive, but the ability of the real architecture to awaken senses within our own imaginations that is. Whether approached through phenomenology, multiplicity, or some other means, give me a building that helps me imagine events and experiences larger than myself. |

E VA N D A N C H E N K A

BO D Y AT T HE CEN TER

I now expand my points on collective memory to a larger scale of time and a larger reading of people: their cultures, their architecture, and how they evolve. In this relationship, architecture is a vessel for the evolution of cultures. Or perhaps cultures are vessels for the evolution of architecture. Whichever order, the correlation suggests a necessity for both. Let us temporarily assume the first: that architecture is a vessel for the evolution of culture. If you take this position, you might feel immense pressure to design a building that allows for the ongoing progress of culture. The vessel you design will play a crucial role in what aspects of culture you allow in and keep out. Are you playing â&#x20AC;&#x153;Godâ&#x20AC;? dressed in your fancy architecture pants? Maybe to some degree. I would argue that as a culture, with a set of agreed upon rules, we most definitely are. We set codes, zones, and restrictions because we understand our cultural and societal limitations as decision makers of the built world, and builders realize their role to create safe structures as a top priority. We also design great halls for our favorite performances, but you better have the money to pay for a ticket. We collect things we believe are precious and store them in fantastic museums, but we easily forget about some remnants that fewer people find as significant. The elements we leave out are like bad cultural genes that we have collectively cast from the gene pool. If our architecture has no niche for a certain trait, then it does not evolve with our culture.

O B S E R V AT I O N S O N P E R C E P T I O N

Let’s assume the second: that culture is a vessel for the evolution of architecture. If you take this position, you might feel an unyielding freedom to design any building you want. Why wouldn’t you if the only restraint you have is the blossoming potential of your culture? You should push the bounds of anything in your reach. If technology does not prevent you, do it. If money is no object, spend it. Of course, this describes an Americanized expression of culture. What if architecture could only evolve under a repressive dictatorship? Then all designs would only further strengthen the reign of one individual and extinguish any representation of the people. No, this stance alone won’t do either. So the chicken-or-the-egg scenario between culture and architecture concludes itself. The cycle works around and around, evolving and checking to ensure we weren’t careless, then evolving again. As a designer in the middle of this continuum, it is best to be an “optimistic skeptic.” Question what cultural values you are embracing or excluding when designing and think about what kind of hopeful evolution might extend from your building. Will your architecture have bias? Of course it will. It means you give a damn. You care about something you see in your culture and are willing to build something as permanent as architecture in order to do something about it. Could you ask to be in a more exciting position? Let’s go be architects. |

W RI TI N G AND B UI L D ING BLACK UTO P IANISM

Writing and Building Black Utopianism: Representing the “Architextural” Musings of June Jordan’s His Own Where (1971)

CHARL ES DAV IS, PH.D.

C H A R L E S D AV I S , P H . D .

W RI TING AND BUILDING B L ACK U TO P I ANISM : R EPR ESENTIN G THE “ A RC H I T E X T UR AL” M USINGS OF JUN E J O RD A N’S HIS OW N W HERE ( 197 1)

Introduction “June Jordan was an architect,” or so declares the black feminist writer and blogger Alexis Pauline Gumbs.1 This declaration involves some political risk on Gumbs’ part, as Jordan is more popularly known as a writer, playwright and poet. Several rhetorical questions immediately come to mind when one considers the veracity of such a claim. Questions such as, ‘Where did Jordan receive her architectural training?’ ‘What are her most influential buildings?’ ‘Who was directly influenced by her built (or unbuilt) projects?’ Of course, fielding all of these questions is a routine part of architectural historiography. Yet, too rigid a categorization of architectural talent leads to patent absurdities. The Architectural Registration Board of the UK recently warned the local press not to refer to foreign designers (such as Renzo Piano or Daniel Libeskind) as ‘architect’ in print because they had no license to practice in the UK.2 While this defense of the professional label is laudable, the criterion of simple licensure for inclusion is too narrowly presentist and legalistic to bracket the architect’s social influence. Etienne Boullée, Friedrich Gilly, Giovanni

1 | S E E P A U L I N E G U M B ’ S E S S AY “ J U N E J O R D A N A N D A B L A C K FEMINIST POETICS OF ARCHITECTURE,” MARCH 21, 2012 ( H T T P : // P L U R A L E TA N T U M . C O M / 2 0 1 2 / 0 3 / 2 1 / J U N E - J O R D A N A N D - A - B L A C K - F E M I N I S T- P O E T I C S - O F - A R C H I T E C T U R E - S I T E - 1 / ) 2 | S E E T H E A R C H D A I LY C O L U M N O F O C T O B E R 9 , 2 0 1 2 C O V E R I N G T H I S C O N T R O V E R S Y AT H T T P : // W W W . A R C H D A I LY. C O M / 2 8 0 7 3 7/ R E N Z O - P I A N O - I S - N O T- A N - A R C H I T E C T/

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Piranesi and Lebbeus Woods might also be excluded on the grounds that they rarely (if ever) produced physical buildings, choosing instead to focus on paper architecture. Of course, paper architects have made some of the most influential changes to the discipline, especially in the postwar period when architectural commissions were down and designers needed to manifest their ideas in ever more convenient ways. All of this simply reveals the fact that tacitly accepted categories of professional expertise have always buckled under the weight of close scrutiny. Of course these men should be considered architects. They think like architects, don’t they? They produce works that emulate architecture, don’t they? And they have influenced architectural culture, haven’t they? But what is to be done when one identifies a body of work that clearly makes use of architectural principles, but is not manifested in the typical mediums of the professional architecture (i.e. through drawing, modeling, or physical construction). Is this work any less architectural, or should this person be considered any less of an architect? These questions are the implicit stakes of Gumbs’ historiographical inclusion of June Jordan into the architectural canon. Despite having no physical structures credited to her name, June Jordan – a female artist and a woman of color, a college dropout with no architectural license – was indelibly drawn to and incorporated the principles of modern architectural culture throughout her career. This journey began with her entry to the Environmental Design major at Barnard College.3 After

3 | E N V I R O N M E N TA L D E S I G N W A S A N U M B R E L L A C U R R I C U L U M INTRODUCED IN THE 1950S AND 60S TO TEACH DESIGNERS O F A L L K I N D S T H E I M P O R TA N C E O F S H A P I N G T H E B U I LT E N V I R O N M E N T. M A N Y O F T H E S E P R O G R A M S W E R E N O T ACCREDITED BECAUSE THEY EXCEEDED THE BOUNDARIES OF P R O F E S S I O N A L E D U C AT I O N .

C H A R L E S D AV I S , P H . D .

Jordan dropped out of Barnard she began seriously reading architectural journals and writings in the art reading room of the Donnell library in New York. She fondly recalls her “fantastic visual inundation” of Greek architecture in a series of biographical writings published in the 1980s: At the Donnell I lost myself among rooms and doorways and Japanese gardens and Bauhaus chairs and spoons. The picture of a spoon, of an elegant, spare utensil as common in its purpose as a spoon, and as lovely and singular in its form as sculpture, utterly transformed my ideas about the possibilities of design in relation to human existence.4 During this time, Jordan developed the roots of what one historian has called her “ecosocial” interpretation of the built environment, which considered architecture and the built environment to be an extension and manifestation of human ecology.5 This preference for the social led her to elevate Buckminster Fuller’s ecological utopian speculations over Le Corbusier’s technocratic solution for distinctly zoned postwar cities. Fuller’s solutions for domed cities seemed to include all of the mess and layering of the urban condition in its organic and emergent condition. This textual love for Fuller blossomed into a real correspondence with the architect and subsequent collaboration on the “Skyrise for Harlem” project – an alternative urban design solution for the “New York” approach to urban renewal.6 Jordan was later awarded the Prix de Rome for Environmental Design in Rome where

4 | J U N E J O R D A N . “ O N E W AY O F S TA R T I N G T H I S B O O K , ” C I V I L WARS (BOSTON: BEACON PRESS, 1981), XVI-XVII 5 | C H E R Y L J . F I S H . P L A C E , E M O T I O N , A N D E N V I R O N M E N TA L JUSTICE IN HARLEM: JUNE JORDAN AND BUCKMINSTER F U L L E R ’ S 1 9 6 5 “ A R C H I T E X T U R A L ” C O L L A B O R AT I O N , ” I N D I S CO U R S E , VO L . 2 9 N O. 2-3 (S P R I N G - FA L L 2 0 0 7 ) , 3 3 2 .

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she began to do research on communal agrarian reform. This research synthesized the themes of race and place by bringing together the communal ideals of Fanny Lou Hamer (the black feminist activist) and the utopian ideals of Buckminster Fuller’s architectural speculations. (The fact that Fuller had also dropped out of school made him an approachable figure in Jordan’s eyes.) However, the greatest testament to Jordan’s architectural expertise is likely to be found in the manner in which she employed architectural description and metaphor in her written work. I tend to agree with Pauline Gumbs that “June Jordan was an architect” in the most expansive sense, that is to say in the sense that counts most for the progression of the architectural discipline (if not its ‘professional’ boundaries). Despite the apparent lack of legal and professional credentials, Jordan’s literature is filled with the techniques, strategies and suppositions of the progressive postwar architect. In light of this situation, it would be more fruitful to consider her literary outputoutput as a synthetic hybridization of her poetic and architectural talents. Such a reading builds upon Cheryl Fish’s identification of the “architextural” character of Jordan’s career; the architectural implications of her genius remain pregnant in the prose and poetry she produced in the postwar period. My own interest in the Jordan’s architextural output extends an abiding interest I have maintained with postwar depictions of black spaces in novels and movies. For me, Jordan’s textual utopian speculations seemed no less real or influential for not being visualized in the traditional mediums of the architect. The textual form of her output was shaped by her need to reach the aspiring young black readers who wanted to dream 6 | R D A N A N D B U C K M I N S T E R F U L L E R , “ I N S TA N T U R B A N RENEWAL,” ESQUIRE MAGAZINE, APRIL 1965.

C H A R L E S D AV I S , P H . D .

but did not think of architecture as an obvious career choice or mode of experimentation. Jordan served as an intermediary for the many who had limited physical agency to reform their environment, but were discovering a new sense of self worth as a result of the radical messages communicated by various black social movements. Outline of the Research Project This research project began by analyzing the architectural and urban design principles implicit in June Jordan’s 1971 novella His Own Where.7 Jordan’s book described the experiences of a young black boy named Buddy who is forced to live on his own after his father is hospitalized by an errant car on the side of the road. Buddy’s life experiences teach him that the external space of the city is overtly aggressive and unforgiving toward black life and therefore not to be trusted. In addition to the vulnerabilities that street corners and other spatial elements of the urban grid presented to its poor black occupants, the massive restructuring of urban policy, urban poverty, and institutional neglect indirectly affected one’s future. This can be seen in the fate of Buddy’s girlfriend who is shunted from one girls home to another in a desperate attempt to escape her abusive father and jealous mother. The one comfort that Buddy finds in life is the art of carpentry, which his father taught him before being hospitalized. In the years after his divorce, Buddy’s father takes to radically restructuring the interior spaces of their 1960s brownstone along modernist principles. The closed off partitioned fabric of

7 | THIS RESEARCH WAS COMPLETED WITH THE HELP OF M Y R E S E A R C H A S S I S TA N T A D A M C A R U T H E R S , A S W E L L A S FUNDING FROM THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE D I G I TA L A R T S C E N T E R . I W A N T T O T H A N K C H R I S J A R R E T T , P E T E R W O N G A N D E R I C S A U D A F O R T H E I R A S S I S TA N C E W I T H O B TA I N I N G T H E S E F U N D S .

WRITING AND BUILDING BLACK UTOPIANISM

the interior that was so typical of turn of the century building stock was reconfigured to construct a three-storey loft space that rose to include all three floors of its height. This space was capped with a stained glass skylight that rested squarely above the new loft space. Although Jordan never uses the term ‘architect’ or ‘architectural’ to describe the transformation of the brownstone, it is clear that her description of the spare and minimalist aesthetic of the interior is influenced by postwar architectural modernism. It is at moments like this that we can clearly see the influence of her early readings in the Donnell library. The newly unfinished walls of the bourgeois interior of Buddy’s home are a manifestation of what I like to call the ‘alternative modernism’ that is revealed in Jordan’s text. This sort of modernism is not officially sanctioned by any authoritative body, but represents the strategic appropriation that the social project of modernism required in order to influence the city from the bottom up. In contrast to Le Corbusier and CIAM’s efforts to position the professional architect as the regulator of physical space, Jordan has placed these tools within the hands of a fifteen year-old boy. He has no teacher besides his father and his own mind, and yet these are enough to gain control over his own space. In fact, he is doing more for the black community than the official planning bodies that are supported by local tax dollars. This informal architectural education causes Buddy to constantly think about the city in spatial and architectural terms. Hisleisurely rides through the city make him imagine a timeshare arrangement for the skyscrapers and business towers that lay dormant after hours, or to elevate interior space as a physical element to be celebrated and shaped instead of filled with possessions and clutter. This textual depiction of Buddy’s ethos gives him a glint of the handicraft roots of Adolf Loos or Mies van der

C H A R L E S D AV I S , P H . D .

WRITING AND BUILDING BLACK UTOPIANISM

F I G U R E 1 | H I S TO R I C FA B R I C O F R O W H O U S E S F O U N D I N H A R L E M A N D B E D F O R D - S T U Y V E S A N T , B R O O K LY N ( C . 1 9 4 0 - 6 0 )

C H A R L E S D AV I S , P H . D .

F I G U R E 2 | M O D E L CO M PA R I N G T R A D I T I O N A L I N T E R I O R O F H I S T O R I C R O W H O U S E S W I T H T H E M O D E R N I S T R E N O V AT I O N S DESCRIBED IN JORDAN’S TEXT

WRITING AND BUILDING BLACK UTOPIANISM

Rohe, although far more tempered by the neglect and want of the 1960s. It is a radical black version of architectural culture that pluralized the restrictive canons manifested by the numerous social exclusions of the postwar period. In a biographical sense, Jordan’s attempts to synthesize race and place in her works constituted her efforts come to grips with the race riots and abject poverty that marked Harlem in the mid to late-1960s. She wanted to move beyond the hate she felt for her oppressors by providing the urban residents of these segregated enclaves with a glimpse of hope, even if this hope was largely textual in form. I began to materialize the architectural implications of Buddy’s world by adjusting the interior space of a historical brownstone house found in 1960s Harlem and BedfordStuyvesant, Brooklyn. (Figures 1, 2) This simulated renovation followed Jordan’s textual depiction of Buddy’s architecture, including gutting the front rooms of the first three floors to form a loft space and cutting out the ground floor bay window to accommodate a floor-to-floor modern window. There were several other innovations described in His Own Where, including the non-conventional door openings and shelves that were flush with wall finishes and lit by bright primary colors (mostly blues, reds, and oranges) to segregate internal functionality. Historically speaking, Jordan’s version of architectural utopianism touches on at least two historical traditions in the United States. On the one hand is the emphasis on developing an iconic image to inaugurate the realization ofthe modern project, and on the other hand there is the communal reformist movements that took place at the turn of the century that employed architecture as an institutional tool for managing the physical and social reality of an experimental society.8 In the latter context, the spatial arrangement and ease of construction trumped the iconic images that dominated

C H A R L E S D AV I S , P H . D .

the 1960s and 70s. Buddy’s approach synthesizes these two attitudes, but in a manner that was completely appropriate for his status as a minority in postwar New York. The redesign of his house realigns the minimalist aesthetic of normative architectural modernism with a do-it-yourself ethos, much like the spirit that underwrote the rise of postwar magazines that were produced for a bourgeois white readership that finally had the money to invest in a good home.9 However, in contrast to the exterior application of modernist aesthetics, Buddy’s renovations are mostly reserved for the interior of the renovated home and a few key locations on the surrounding exterior grounds. I have tried to depict this restrained ethos via an architectural model that preserves the exterior modeling of the brownstone, but radically reconfigured the interior space. (Figure 2) Just as Ian Grandison noted in his landscape study of Tuskegee Institute, black entrepreneurs were often forced to hide any visible evidence of their steady progress from hostile onlookers, be they black or white.10 Buddy’s experiments with creating his own version of architectural modernism was both done in response to the fact that he was not a ‘man’ in the legal sense, and that his poor neighbors looked upon his 8 | F O R I N F O R M AT I O N O N T H E C O M M U N I TA R I A N T R A D I T I O N , S E E D O L O R E S H AY D E N ’ S S E V E N A R C H I T E C T U R A L U T O P I A S : T H E A R C H I T E C T U R E O F C O M M U N I TA R I A N S O C I A L I S M , 1 7 9 0 - 1 9 7 5 (MIT PRESS, 1976). 9 | FOR THE RACIAL POLITICS OF POSTWAR MAGAZINE C U LT U R E S E E M O N I C A P E N I C K ’ S “ F R A M I N G M O D E R N : M AY N A R D L . P A R K E R , E L I Z A B E T H G O R D O N , A N D H O U S E B E A U T I F U L’ S P A C E S E T T E R P R O G R A M , ” I N M AY N A R D P A R K E R : M O D E R N P H O T O G R A P H Y A N D T H E A M E R I C A N D R E A M ( YA L E U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS, 2012), 161-189. FOR THE RACIAL POLITICS OF POSTWAR HOUSING IN GENERAL, SEE DIANNE HARRIS’ LITTLE WHITE HOUSES: HOW THE POSTWAR HOME CONSTRUCTED RACE IN A M E R I C A ( U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I N N E S O TA P R E S S , 2 0 1 3 ) . 1 0 | K E N D R I C K I A N G R A N D I S O N , “ N E G O T I AT E D S P A C E : T H E B L A C K C O L L E G E C A M P U S A S A C U LT U R A L R E C O R D O F P O S T B E L L U M A M E R I C A , ” I N A M E R I C A N Q U A R T E R LY , V O L . 5 1 , NO.3 (1999): 529-579.

WRITING AND BUILDING BLACK UTOPIANISM

F I G U R E 3 | ‘A R C H I T E X T U R A L’ M A P O F H A R L E M R E V I TA L I Z E D B Y THE URBAN DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF JORDAN’S TEXT HIS OWN WHERE (1971)

F I G U R E 4 | C O L L A G E I L L U S T R AT I N G T H E I M P L I C AT I O N S A N D R O O T S O F J O R D A N ’ S ‘A R C H I T E X T U R A L’ P R I N C I P L E S : ( A ) D I G I TA L M O D E L O F B U D D Y ’ S H O U S E ; ( B ) ‘A R C H I T E X T U R A L’ M A P OF HARLEM; (C) FRONTISPIECE OF JUNE JORDAN’S HIS OWN WHERE (1971); (D) SKYRISE FOR HARLEM (1969)

C H A R L E S D AV I S , P H . D .

architectural innovations with suspicion. In a speculative turn, I have also tried to depict what the broader implications of Buddyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DIY attitude might have been had they been communally appropriated by the black community in the form of a colored map of Harlem. (Figure 3) In contrast to contemporary histories of postwar architecturalutopianism that omit Harlemites from participating in design culture, this map reveals the predominance of an alternative utopian thinking that was manifest in Jordanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s depiction of Harlem. For her, Harlem was a space of bright minds locked into a context of dramatically limited agency. Yet, this agency must be acknowledged and fostered if one is ever to actually use this agency when given the opportunity. The final collage gives us a glimpse into a typical 1960s black as reconstructed by people like Buddy in His Own Where. (Figure 4) The playful attitude of young boys and girls is redirected to reforming the interiors of inherited spaces. As the block recedes into the distance we can see superficial manifestations of others daring to experiment, and the avenue turns upward to reveal the larger context of Harlem silently participating in the reclamation and reformation of domestic space. The purpose of these illustrations is not to authoritatively represent June Jordanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architextural speculations, but to provide them with a visual and material reality that the architect and architectural historian can recognize. Through her words, Jordan reveals the complexity of black urban space in the postwar period through an alternative vision of architectural modernism. Conclusions More important than arguing over whether June Jordan can officially be called an architect for the purposes of architectural historiography is her insistence on not identifying

WRITING AND BUILDING BLACK UTOPIANISM

herself in exclusively careerist terms. Whatever we decide to call her does not matter if we can resolutely reclaim her hybridized and ecological approach to interpreting the built environment. In this sense, June Jordan is only one of many black artists and writers who found value in the principles of architectural modernism and urban design.11 All it requires of us is to read through these speculations and continue to remake them in the present. Doing so would afford such workan even greater influence on architectural culture as it requires an active interpretation of the word-images that were recorded in the postwar period. |

11 | I WILL OFFER A RESEARCH SEMINAR IN THE SPRING OF 2 0 1 4 T H AT W I L L A F F O R D S T U D E N T S W I T H T H I S O P P O R T U N I T Y. T H E C O U R S E I S T E N TAT I V E LY E N T I T L E D “ T H E M O D E R N I S T S P A C E S O F A F R I C A N - A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E A N D F I L M ” . I CONSIDERED OTHER TITLES, INCLUDING “BLACK URBANIST U T O P I A S ” A N D “ P O S T W A R A R C H I -T E X T U A L I S M , ” B U T T H E S E T H I N G S A R E A M O V I N G TA R G E T.

CO N S ID ER ING E N GA G EM ENT S

INTRODUCTION TO ENGAGEMENTS

NECESSARY ENGAGEMENTS

DISCOVERED ENGAGEMENTS

DISTRACTED ENGAGEMENTS

DAKOTA PAHEL-SHORT

D A K O TA P A H E L- S H O R T

I N T R O D UC T IO N TO ENGA GEMEN TS

Up to this point I have focused on visual conditions and organizational methods of form. The topic of engaging architecture has only loosely been considered for plenty of reasons. Visual conditions dominate the architectural profession and the ability to create a sexy perspective and faĂ§ade is needed to sell our work. These visual hierarchies are skills to master so that little effort has to be put into them in later projects. Visual conditions also affect us whether or not we ever physically interact with a building. We tend to avoid walking into walls and understand where to enter or which direction to go to reach our destination in a wellorganized building. However, most of these conditions fade into the backdrop of daily life. Architecture that evades this backdrop to disrupt people is not well-received or used. We do not expend our mental energy navigating a composition. Our mind is focused on our dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s schedule, social interactions, or events. Exploring moments of engagement between people and architecture allow our designs to interact with people in a meaningful and considerate way. Necessary, discovered, and distracted engagements together add up to all of our interactions with architecture. Necessary engagements involve pieces of a building with which we interact in a purely functional sense. We have to use a door to enter a building. We have to use a lab sink for programmatic requirements. We have to use the toilet to use the restroom. These areas are hot spots to consider the other two forms of engagement, discovered and distracted, because the architecture will not be in any closer proximity to people than this.

CONSIDERING ENGAGEMENTS

Discovered engagements involve the personal uses we find for the form of the building. This includes a half wall we decided to eat lunch on, a niche we think will be a good gathering space, or a balcony used for an April Foolsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; joke each year. These are functions people find for parts of the building that completely fall outside the program. Discovered engagements are limited only to human imagination, but we can create spaces that lend themselves to creative uses. Distracted engagements are the aesthetic moments of architecture that fall outside function. It is a pattern a person traces in ceiling tiles when they have nothing to do. It is an aura of a space. It is the quality of materials used. It is every distraction from our intended plans for the day and the things we notice when our minds have gone quiet. It is when architecture inspires. However, distracted engagements also have the least influence. A busy person will never notice them. The considerate combination of these engagements increases the chance that the art behind architecture is actually experienced. Necessary engagements are the most influential. We are manipulating the architecture. Stare too long into the abyss and the abyss gazes into you. Where we manipulate the architecture, we are more likely to be manipulated by it. The material considerations of a door will prove more influential than a wall because more people actually handle a door. This combines necessary engagements with distracted engagements. Considering the types of engagement with architecture allows us to create a hierarchy of design focus. |

D A K O TA P A H E L- S H O R T

NEC ESSARY ENGAGEMEN TS

As defined before, necessary engagements involve moments in a design that interact with people in a purely functional sense. These interactions can be both visual and physical. However, physical interactions are a more intimate and direct way to influence people. We have to touch the door to open it. The temperature, weight, direction it swings, and texture of the door are noted in our mind even if it is on a subconscious level. These sensations are combined with the visual information of watching a door move along with possible auditory information. The increase of sensations in the moment we open a door results in a moment of increased focus on the architecture. In this condition of raised architectural awareness, we increase the chance of inspiration for the occupant by the architecture. Inspiration may sound a little vague but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s that way for a reason. Architecture can inspire thoughts and actions in people but it cannot dictate the actions of people. There is no direct way for architecture to relay information to people without the use of symbols. Distracted engagements, when married with function and physical interaction, raise their chances of influencing people. These types of influences can be predicted by studying human interactions with form but not strictly determined. For this reason, functional moments in a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s program require more aesthetic attention. Restrooms are the perfect example of a functional moment in a building that has lacked attention by most architects. Objects that define restrooms often fall victim to uniformity. These impersonal and uniform objects fill a space that is a battleground of sexuality and gender. Mirrors, sinks,

CONSIDERING ENGAGEMENTS

toilets, and stalls are moments to explore the relationships between public and private as well as clean and dirty spaces--or at least an opportunity to maximize comfort. Every program with necessary engagements can use those engagements as nodes of compositional focus. Hierarchy established through the use of necessary engagements as nodes helps order standard and customized areas of design. Customizations require more resources and clients require evidence that their resources are being used efficiently. The architectural moments we have to physically engage with on a daily basis should contain a certain level of comfort and consideration often absent in standard devices. Even simple moves, like wrapping a metal door handle in leather, can improve comfort and even functionality. Temperature exchanges between joined materials occur faster than leather. This means that metal heated by the sun will become painfully hot to the touch more quickly than leather. A leather-wrapped handle will remain comfortable and in extreme cases operable longer during winter and summer. Such considerate customizations are lost when we prioritize distracted engagements over the necessary ones. When one part of a design is already customized in consideration of necessary engagements, it is more justifiable to customize it with considerations of distracted engagements. It is more justifiable because it is cheaper to have concentrated areas of customization working in a standard system than to have an entirely custom building that resulted from unfocused customization. This focused customization of necessary parts combines economic sensibilities with the desire to aesthetically

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improve peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experiences of design. Necessary engagements are heavily influenced by technology. Many new gadgets allow for a hands-off approach to occupying a building. Automated doors, sinks, lights, and toilets have made many necessary engagements devoid of physical interaction. We are still influencing the architecture, but the architecture takes much less physical effort and attention to influence. Layers of occupation begin to flatten. Many sensations become removed and bias is given towards the visual. However, automation is also more efficient and less distracting, but it raises many questions. In which ways does architecture have the right to distract its occupants into engagement? Is there such thing as being too detached from our surroundings? Are visual interactions enough to make design important? How relevant will many long-standing concepts in architecture remain with the invention of automation? |

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D I S COVER ED ENGA GEMEN TS

We find ways to claim space through the invention of personalized uses. These discovered engagements bridge the gap between pure functionalism and personal experience. Such engagements fall outside the defined uses of program and necessary function. UNC Charlotte School of Architecture’s “Pit” is intended to act as a social space and as a connection between architecture students and the rest of campus; that is the function of its program. While program and necessary engagements can be listed and charted, there are an infinite number of discovered engagements within our built world. We cannot list every single way “The Pit” will be used by students and faculty at the school. There are far too many functions and uses to be predicted and accounted for. As architects, we tend to generalize uses of a space and, thus, limit its potential for creative use. Ideally, we understand and create space for the human body and its limitations while making design choices respectful to a local culture in order to appropriately organize space and encourage creative use. Sectional variation allows for more discovered engagements with a design. People are less likely to apply more of their body to areas they feel are dirty. A flat floor becomes the lowest point of a room and thus the dirtiest and wettest. It is generally only used for the standing of people and objects because a flat surface allows for such a stage. Steps begin to create a hierarchy of clean/ dry and dirty/wet spaces. The highest floor planes resemble a primitive hilltop as a place to sit or rest. Such places are the cleanest and driest. We look for these places, above the wet and

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the low, to occupy. The size of the step depends on whether it enables transition or allows for occupation. For us to predict how the step will be used, we simply consider the human scale. We should understand that there is a range suitable for transitional steps, sitting steps, and steps that become quarter or half walls that engage our upper body. We also need to consider the shape of the human body. Orthogonal forms may be the clearest systems of construction and organization but they make no adjustments to the human body. A flat surface is less comfortable than one that conforms to fit the subtle contours of the body. Sectional deviations need to address the maximum number of human conditions and adjust to the human body in order to maximize the number of possible human engagements for a place. For every culture, materials imply certain forms of engagements. We need to be mindful of how the cultures we are building for typically use wood, metal, plastic, fabric, and masonry. Certain materials can be seen as universally more comfortable than others. And each culture tends to utilize local materials available to them. The association of local materials with comforting memories can challenge the foreign materials that are actually more comfortable in a purely objective sense. We always need to be mindful that people are more likely to experiment in places that they feel connected with and feel more comfortable in. Elements that ground a place in local culture also establish the comfortable atmosphere needed for design experimentation and allow more variety for discovered engagements. |

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D I S T R AC T ED ENGA GEMENTS

Distracted engagements set the scene of our daily lives. Ironically, this least influential method of engaging architecture also separates the architect from the builder or the engineer. Distracted engagements are our experience of the building as a work of art. These engagements are devoid of function and completely subjective. As such, it is impossible to give specific instructions for their creation. Anything could inspire someone or influence anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mood. This is it difficult for the designer while liberating for the artist. We pick anything for our parti. If it encourages us to create, then dammit, we are completely justified in doing so. As humans, we need art as the backdrop to our lives. As architects, we have to admit we are artists with a different medium, architecture; we should be honest to this medium. While we define an architectural aesthetic, we must remember that the building is a building, not a sculpture, painting, or drawing. Distracted engagements should be compositionally placed like paintings are hung on the wall. Their adjacencies matter as much as their content. Hiding distracted engagements in isolation is like placing your favorite painting in a closet. Being the farthest removed from inhabitable engineering and the closet to pure artistic expression, these engagements should be paired with necessary engagements and ideally, discovered engagements. After distracted engagements are paired, people are more likely to stumble upon them, and we have an increased possibility of affecting and inspiring the occupant. It is important to remember that inspiration can be guided but not forced. All we can do is incorporate our art into strategic locations according to formal logic and an anthropological

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order of the building and hope someone appreciates it. Luckily our art is always placed in the background. It may be odd to consider, but the background is the best possible place for art. Art dies when it is placed as the foreground. The best example of this is museums. Museums are collections of dead art because we go there expecting something from the art. It is impossible to force inspiration, and if we are expecting art to influence our mood, it lessens the impact. We should go to museums to ponder a problem or for any other possible reason than to look at the art and then the art may be able to work as it was intended. What we can take from this is that we should not design buildings for people who go to places to look at architecture. Sorry architects, these buildings are not for you. We design for people who have to use our buildings because they are the only ones who view it as the daily backdrop to their lives. |

FROM IN DIA TO ADHOC

B L A KE M O N TI E TH

FROM INDIA TO ADHOC

A S SEM BLED IN INDIA

Introduction Leading to my exploration of six Indian urban landscapes in May, 2013, I understood an evolution of participatory roles in the built environment through four consecutive stages of design control: intimate inhabitant control (e.g. tipis of North America), concentrated societal control (e.g. Pyramids of Giza), patron/master builder control (e.g. Florence Cathedral), and professionally specialized control (e.g. World’s Columbian Exposition). Comparing the intimate level of inhabitant control in primitive built forms to the stratified professional landscape of modern practice exposes a profound question. In our search for increasingly complex and magnificent built environments, has the inhabitant’s role become lost in a sea of specialists? Simultaneously, in an age of astounding technological accessibility and capacity for the average joe, it is crucial to consider the next stage of this evolution in participatory roles. Will new tools allow a return to intimate inhabitant control or intensify modern stratification? These questions brought me to India and led to the following research. Before seeking answers in crystal balls, I will employ Charles Jencks’ and Nathan Silver’s Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation as a theoretical foundation from which to understand this evolution of participatory roles in the built environment in the narrower context of the twentieth century. I will also supplement my research with moments from my excursion across India. These moments do not necessarily support my research. They were, however, essential to building a better understanding of my interests and led me to this research.

BLAKE MONTIETH

Standardization and the Automobile Much of the stratification of modern participatory roles in the built environment can be traced back to Henry Ford’s Highland Park assembly plant. Here, Ford implemented the first formalized production system, the system of mass production (Clarke 78). The key to Ford’s standardized system of assembly was that only one standard product was available, the Model T. “Therefore in 1909, I announced one morning without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be ‘Model T’ , and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked: ‘Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black.’ I cannot say that anyone agrees with me.” (Quotations from Henry Ford, Clarke 79) A strict focus on one standardized model allowed Ford to offer the Model T at wildly popular, and increasingly lower, prices; in just sixteen years, the Model T decreased from $850 in 1908 to $260 in 1924. Essentially, Ford established a practice of replenishing initial investments by repeating a form often enough. Naturally, this manufacturing process quickly became the foundation of the “virtuous cycle” of the American production model (Clarke 79). Constance Clarke, author of Automotive Production Systems and Standardisation: From Ford to the Case of Mercedes-Benz, offers five core elements of this production model: 1. 2.

“A process orientation based on the principles of mass production” “Job design centered on highly fragmented tasks and little responsibility of direct workers”

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M U M B A I | B E F O R E I C O U L D E X P L O R E M Y I D E A S O F S E L F - B U I LT A R C H I T E C T U R E , I H A D T O L E A R N T O C R O S S T H E S T R E E T , B AT T L E T H E H E AT , A N D C O P E W I T H U N W A N T E D AT T E N T I O N .

MUMBAI | THROUGHOUT MY WEEK IN MUMBAI, I FOUND SOLACE I N P U B L I C S P A C E S L I K E C H O P AT T Y B E A C H A N D M A R I N E D R I V E .

BLAKE MONTIETH

JODHPUR | MEHRANGARH FORT SERVED AS BOTH A MONUMENT IN JODHPUR’S URBAN LANDSCAPE AND A VENUE FROM WHICH T O A P P R E C I AT E T H E C A P T I V AT I N G “ B L U E C I T Y ” B E L O W .

U D A I P U R | T H E M O N U M E N T S O F U D A I P U R W E R E P R I M A R I LY B U I LT A N D O W N E D B Y A S U N G L E R O YA L F A M I LY ; S O T H E Y E X I S T I N A N E N D L E S S C I R C L E O F A P P R E C I AT I O N .

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3. 4. 5.

“Improvement and process innovation rested firmly in the hands of experts (Industrial Engineers)” “Human resource management based on hire-and-fire strategy and skill acquisiting through on-the-job training” “Labor relations marked by “distrust and antagonism” with management strongly defining its ‘right to manage’” (Clarke 79)

While Ford’s manufacturing process and its ancestors, Fordist standardization, continue to offer goods at “affordable” levels, its impact is considerably more significant and alarming. Its effects begin at a fundamental level, “…psychologists and sociologists concluded that endlessly repeated forms are not stimulating or provocative. Instead of prodding individuals into actively working with them, standardized forms discourage any such participation and alienate some from the man-made environment.” Fordist standardization also effectively institutionalized the American middle-class dream. “That is, they appeal to keeping up with the Joneses and are not in any way non-conformist. They are clean, shiny, striking and slightly classical in visual impact. Collected all together in a home, they overwhelm the individuality or personal ‘character’ that was common to most homes in the preindustrial era.” (Jencks 59) 60’s & 70’s Counter Culture Fordist standardization dominates American culture to this day; but certain subcultures within American society emerged in the 1960’s and 1970’s in response to this system. Charles Jencks, co-author of Adhocism, is a clear enthusiast of these subcultures and their futures. “...a new mode of direct action is emerging, the rebirth of a democratic mode and style, where everyone can create his

BLAKE MONTIETH

personal environment out of impersonal subsystems, whether they are new or old, modern or antique. By realizing his immediate needs, by combining ad hoc parts, the individual creates, sustains, and transcends himself. Shaping the local environment towards desired ends is key to mental health; the present environment, blank and unresponsive, is a key to idiocy and brainwashing.” (Jencks 15) Two aspects of this time, among many, capture the values of these subcultures: the Hippie consumer strategy and the Whole Earth Catalog. Emerging from simultaneous passions against consumerist products and a love for “doing your own thing,” the Hippie consumer strategy discovered numerous “free” ways of living off the waste of consumerist culture. “A free house can be constructed from the bodies of used cars; free food can be collected at the closing hours of meat, fish, and vegetable shops; free furniture can be picked up off the streets the night before the sanitation department makes its bulk pickups.” (Jencks 65) Hippie consumerist strategies prove that one can live off the waste of an affluent majority (Jencks 67). Obviously, this offers a step towards a more sustainable future, as frequently enthused about by Buckinster Fuller and peers; but, in the context of this argument, it allowed a culture with a limited set of accessible tools, by today’s standards, to accessibly doit-themselves. If the Hippie consumer strategy was a reaction against consumerist products, the Whole Earth Catalog was similarly a reaction against consumerist advertising. It’s stated ‘Function’

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D E L H I | I N F O R M A L U R B A N I N H A B I TA N T S T H R I V E I N D E L H I INCLUDING BLANKET MERCHANTS, RICKSHAW DRIVERS, TOUTS, AND BEGGARS.

A G R A | T H E J U X TA P O S I T I O N B E T W E E N T H E TA J M A H A L’ S O P U L E N C E A N D T H E I N F O R M A L U R B A N FA B R I C O U T S I D E I T S G AT E S I S A L A R M I N G .

BLAKE MONTIETH

VA R A N A S I | T H I S I S A C I T Y O F R I T UA L S . E V E RY A S P E C T O F L I F E I S C O N N E C T E D T O T H E G A N G E S R I V E R . I T S R E S U LT I N G M ARCHITECTURE PRESENCE REFLECTS THIS.

VA R A N A S I | E V E RY N I G H T , T H E A A RT I S H O W D R AW S E N O R M O U S C R O W D S T O T W O G H AT S O N T H E G A N G E S . T H I S I S A M U LT I L AY E R E D H I N D U C E L E B R AT I O N T H AT U N I T E S T H E C R O W D W I T H THE RIVER.

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at the beginning of the catalog speaks to its ideals. “The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed: • Useful as a tool, • Relevant to independent education, • High quality or low cost, • Easily available by mail. CATALOG listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of CATALOG users and staff.” (Portola Institute)

Comparing the Whole Earth Catalog to the Sears Catalog, the once omnipresent heart of consumer culture, highlights its cultural intentions further. Both positioned themselves as all-encompassing mail-order catalogs; but the Sears Catalog was organized to maximize profit while the Whole Earth Catalog was organized to maximize usefulness and based on user submissions. In addition to useful products, the Whole Earth Catalog listed items that simply expanded knowledge and shared information: short stories, poems, research, howto guides, etc. While the catalog did not remain in circulation for long, it was immensely influential to the ethics underlying the infancy and adolescence of digital and internet culture beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. The Whole Earth Catalog and many additional products of 1960’s and 1970’s counter cultures have gradually transitioned from the radical ethos to popularized norms today. I see evidence of this in the fundamental ethics behind the digital and internet revolutions stemming from Silicon Valley since the 1980’s; but I will save this research for another time.

T H E A CT O F M A KI N G

INTRODUCTION TO MAKING

RISKY BUSINESS

DISCOVERY AND ASSEMBLY

MIX & MINGLE Merging the acts of design and construction

N ATE WEB STER

N AT E W E B S T E R

I NT R O D UC T IO N TO MAK ING

Over the course of human existence, we have used our hands to create, invent, investigate, and make our way through time. The act of making an object grants its maker a level of intimacy with that object. This intimacy would not be possible without a physical connection during the process of creation. A striking image comes to mind of a blind person examining an objectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beauty not through visual observation but through the simple sense of touch. Historically, the architectural profession has been considered a profession of craft; the architect was the original master builder. This worked because of a close relationship between the architect and the physical construction of the design. Divisions of labor in the construction industry along with the excessive digitalization of our field have disestablished the architect as the master builder. The sensibility practiced by a craftsman, such as the conscious manipulation of materials and the relationship between the maker and the made object, is something that could be immensely beneficial for us to examine as architects. The role that drawing plays for the architect is not simply a form of two-dimensional representation; it is the architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s method for investigating their design. Rather than simply drawing lines, we imagine the third dimension that we create. We feel materials, walk across floors, and experience spaces. With this in mind, the physical connection practiced through the act of making should provide a knowledge equal to or greater than that of drawing. With a continual push towards a fully digital architectural design process, we risk reaching a point where the haptic

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THE ACT OF MAKING

connection between the designer and his/her creation is absent. The human hand serves as a bridge between mind and matter. Without some sort of physical connection between the designer and their practiced design, we cannot achieve holistic creation. Access to digital resources present an efficiency that is undeniable. This discourse will investigate connections between the designer and their work at different points and scales throughout the design process from from detailed models to full-scale projects in addition to the role of design/build. |

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R ISKY BUSINESS

Throughout the design process, the designer engages in multiple acts of making. In David Pye’s text, “The Nature and Art of Workmanship”, he uses the tools and methods employed in these acts of making to define two kinds of creation: the workmanship of risk and the workmanship of certainty. The workmanship of certainty is described as a predetermined process practicing exactitude. Anything made in full automation would fit into this category. In opposition, the workmanship of risk is described as anything made with the potential for mistakes and variability through its process of creation. Examine the contrast between recording text through writing with pen and paper and recording text through typing to understand this distinction. When typing on a computer, there is no risk involved. If I make a mistake I merely “backspace” in order to correct my error. When writing with pen and paper, there is a continual possibility of making an irreparable blunder. Any attempt to repair these errors would leave an indication of the initial mistake and expose the text’s development. If the architect can also function as a craftsman, which workmanship should have a rightful place in the architectural design process; one of risk, or one of certainty? Neither one exclusively. By using risky methods of creation, the maker maintains the possibility for making mistakes; this therefore serves as a source for knowledge in terms of technique while also greatly changing the final outcome of the made object. If the workmanship of risk were employed in architectural design, our architectures would have a greater potential for richness and variation. Yet, as all architects would attest, the

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precision and efficiency accessed through the workmanship of certainty is of paramount importance, mostly in terms of representation. Mankindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s continual demand for individuality combined with the need for efficiency and precision in architecture call for the makers of the field to find a middle ground, a workmanship of risky certainty. Our modern environment is following disturbing trends of an excessive fascination with objects that are exclusively made through ruthlessly regulated processes that deprive the designed and made objects around us from diversity of texture and form. There will always be a demand for things made and designed within the realm of risk. But we as makers have a responsibility to fill our environments with the highest quality entities possible. Rather than exclusively employing a workmanship of certainty, we have a better chance of achieving successful cooperation if we maintain a presence of risk in our processes of making and design. |

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A B O V E | A M O D E L M A D E W I T H T H E P R E S E N C E O F C E R TA I N T Y B E I N G L I M I T E D T O T H AT O F A M E TA L S T R A I G H T E D G E , M A K I N G I T A N O B J E C T C R E AT E D P R I M A R I LY W I T H I N A W O R K M A N S H I P OF RISK.

A B O V E | T H I S M O D E L , O N T H E O T H E R H A N D I S P R I M A R I LY A N A S S E M B LY O F L A S E R C U T P U Z Z L E P I E C E S , E L I M I N AT I N G T H E M A J O R I T Y O F T H E R I S K I N V O LV E D I N T H E A C T O F C R E AT I N G THE MODEL.

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D I S COVERY AND A SSEMB LY

Every maker practices some form of assembly when they design and make a new object. We engage in a process of putting together a series of parts to create some sort of finished product. What is not universal is from where our series of parts are sourced. For example, these parts could begin as a tree that is slowly whittled down through a multi-step process of stereotomy to create pristine pieces of milled lumber; this we will refer to as a process of material manipulation. On the other hand, sourcing these parts could be a more straightforward method of a sort of search and rescue process to find deserted objects and discover possibilities in them for their otherwise unrecognized potential. Claude Levi-Strauss would refer to the latter as the bricoleur. Both processes are forms of discovery, and both practice the workmanship of risk and the workmanship of certainty at some point in the development. When practicing the process of material manipulation, we establish an intimacy with our materials that is unrivaled in any other process of discovery. Whether it is combining water and clay in order to shape a piece of pottery or slowly stripping years away from a piece of wood, we as the maker must have an uninterrupted consciousness as we work, knead, and chip away at the material. I am reminded of the marble sculptures made by Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and Ghiberti. A mere slip of the chisel could result in the marring of the entire work. This is where the workmanship of risk factors greatly into the process of material manipulation. What if we were as conscious as Ghiberti with every pass through the plane, or every ounce of water added to our clay mixture? A cohesive relationship between the maker and their material is

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absolutely paramount in order to achieve a congruous made object or design. The bricoleur is roughly defined by Levi-Strauss as a maker who composes their material palette with objects and artifacts that are immediately available. I am currently working on a project that requires this bricoleur condition for the design and construction of a kinetic sculpture. Personally, this has been a new adventure and has forced me to adapt my design process in order to compose an object through the assembly of found objects. As I sketched out the design for my sculpture, I effectively made no progress because I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t able to conceive of a concept with the absence of a material palette. The next day I went to the scrap yard to see what objects would catch my eye and what might inspire the design of my project. This also resulted in a lack of purpose since I was not able to decide on a material identity for an object that did not yet possess a formal identity. After a long series of give-and-take between material and formal exploration, the sculpture finally started to develop. When we act as the bricoleur, we discover the material in a different way than when we engage in the manipulation of a material. We dig through bins of car parts, cut our hands on shards of metal, and get covered in grease and grime before we finally uncover what we are searching for. What we find is not merely an object; it is both the material and formal identity of what we have sought out to make. This embodies the workmanship of risk that is associated with the bricoleur. |

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M I X & M INGLE: M ER G ING THE ACTS O F DESIGN AND CO NSTRUCTION To close out my series of articles on the importance of maintaining a close proximity between the acts of thinking and making throughout the design process, I will discuss the traditions of the master-builder, architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s departure from that status, and how the recent revival of the design-build format of practice can serve as a vehicle to return the architect and the master-builder to synonymy. Before and during the first part of the Italian Renaissance, the processes of design and construction occurred simultaneously. Rather than employing the use of models and drawings, the architect/master-builder took advantage of full-scale, on-site layouts and direct collaborations with artisans. It is difficult to imagine that the act of dragging a stake through the ground and essentially drafting a full-scale plan would not have a different set of implications to the design process than drawing a line on paper or clicking a computer mouse. This amalgamation of thinking and making gave the master-builder a perspective that is not as frequently granted in the realm of architecture today. This perspective and a familiarity with procedures of construction resulted in a holistic design to create works of architecture that are still standing and revered over six hundred years later. Numerous factors have contributed to a gradual separation between the designer and the craftsman. The two that I want to focus on are the influence of technology and the education of the architect. Technological advances from the invention of perspective drawing by Brunelleschi to parametric design have changed the culture of architecture throughout the history of our field. However, it seems that recent progressions have encouraged a severe separation

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A B O V E | T H E S E P H O T O S A R E TA K E N F R O M A G R O U P P R O J E C T W H E R E T H E TA S K W A S T O D E S I G N A W A L L T H AT I N C O R P O R AT E E A C H M E M B E R ’ S S T U D I O D E S I G N , A N D T H E N C O N S T R U C T I T AT FULL SCALE.

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between thinking and making. The fact that you can design an object in the computer then have another computer make a three-dimensional representation is very troubling to me. While its efficiency and precision are indisputable benefits, they are superseded by its disadvantages. There is a pragmatic form of knowledge that can only be accessed with a haptic connection through the process of fabrication. The years that I have spent on the job site balancing on a ladder while placing floor joists that span over a twelve-foot dining room have taught me something that I could never learn from numerous hours reading a textbook or modeling on the computer. A local Charlotte architect once told me, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Architects are poorly educated but highly trained.â&#x20AC;? He was communicating that current methods practiced in architecture schools are failing to properly prepare us for the challenges that we will face once we enter the world of architectural practice. The architect/ master-builder from Medieval times and the Renaissance was subject to a hands-on apprenticeship type of education. Only through a training method that emphasized not only design, but also a tactile connection to the art of building and tectonics, were the architects of that time able to collaborate with the artisans that built their ideas, and as a consequence, earned the title of master-builder. For nearly two decades now, Bryan Mackay-Lyons, of Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple architects, has been experimenting with the possibilities and role of a design-build method of architectural creation at a summer program called Ghost Lab. A small group of students and practitioners congregate to a humble plot of land along the shores of Nova Scotia and spend two weeks thinking and making, with an emphasis on making, architecture into existence. Mackay-Lyons himself considers the program to be a critique on the current state of the architectural education in both the academe and in practice.

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A B O V E & R I G H T | T H I S I S A P R O J E C T T H AT I D E S I G N E D , A N D T H E N O V E R T H E S U M M E R H A D T H E P R I V I L E G E T O P A R T I C I P AT E IN A LARGE PORTION OF THE CONSTRUCTION FROM SPREADING G R A V E L F O R T H E F O U N D AT I O N T O T H E W A L L A N D R O O F FRAMING.

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The factors that are emphasized, and should be emphasized in any architectural design, are the place, the contextual tectonic culture, the techniques of construction, and satisfying the needs of its future inhabitants. This two-week exploration truly taps the roots of what architecture is--challenging the notion of shelter and challenging the state of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architectural realm. The late David Pye stated that the only way to determine quality of craftsmanship is to observe the made objectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s resemblance to the original design. If architects are more directly involved with the construction process through collaboration with artisans, and if they practice the acts of design and making simultaneously, it would only result in a higher quality of craftsmanship and building. I will once again refer to the works of architecture built in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Numerous structures erected by the architect/master-builder continue to be the most appreciated buildings in the world, revealing a truly sustainable architecture. This level of success and appreciation can only be achieved through a process of architectural creation that equally values and intertwines the act of construction to the act of design.

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Throughout the Fall 2013 semester, the Gump team maintained a publish-or-die mentality. We released three full-color newspapers, a group account of the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recent summer abroad trip, and biannual collection of the semester This frequency of publishing starkly contrasts the low frequency of the previous semester. We grew tremendously from a focus on publishing. In the Spring 2014 semester, Gump will focus on expanding content submissions and distribution. This will require encouraging content submissions from significantly more sources, reaching new audiences in the College of Arts + Architecture, and making publications more accessible to all readers. Blake Montieth Editor/President Victoria Pike Design Team Leader Julia Badorrek Content Team Leader Melissa Krakowski Distributions Team Leader Carly Coates Marketing Team Leader Alberto Mata Social Media Team Leader