Thesis Proposal by Chad Christie

BUNKERHOUSE A THESIS PROPOSAL BY Chad Christie

TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT

MANIFESTO

Declaration of Intention Motives + Agenda Rationale

5 6 7

HYPOTHESIS

Provisional Supposition Typological Precedents Theoretical Precedents Program Site

9 10 18 24 25

THESIS STATEMENT

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT This proposal operates on the premise that architecture is increasingly becoming too infatuated with its own formal autonomy and spectacle, and thus should re-evaluate its intentions to also produce a contrasting species of antiiconic architecture of camouflage in order to maintain the careful balance between the (apparent) ordinary and the extraordinary. This subdued architecture will utilize the concept of â&#x20AC;&#x153;camouflage,â&#x20AC;? not just as a strategy of concealment against a given background, but as a device for us to define the self against a given cultural setting through the medium of representationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;either by becoming part of that setting, or by distinguishing ourselves from it. This proposal is for the design of a dwelling or series of dwellings that reinterpret, re-present, and reoccupy the abandoned bunkers and gun batteries of Fort Miles along the Atlantic coast of southern Delaware. During World War II, the United States Army constructed hundreds of these coastal defense structures to protect our harbors and coastlines. Currently, many World War II-era concrete batteries and tactical structures survive in very good condition due to their relatively recent construction and to the high quality of their cement work. However, many have been sealed, some buried, a few demolished, and others used as foundations for homes. High economic values for oceanfront property have been key drivers in the destruction of many of these World War II structures, even though the structures themselves were in excellent condition. This project is intended to serve as a potential prototypical utilization of these surplus structures. Programmatically, this dwelling(s) will escape permanent domestic status by reorganizing itself to house a functional public, cultural program as well. As a flexible interpretation. "camouflage" will be the vehicle by which the multiple identities of the project are created and transformed.

Manifesto DECLARATION OF INTENTION MOTIVES + AGENDA RATIONALE

Manifesto DECLARATION OF INTENTION This proposal is for the design of a dwelling or series of dwellings that reinterpret, re-present, and reoccupy the abandoned bunkers and gun batteries of Fort Miles along the Atlantic coast of southern Delaware. More specifically, the architectural intervention will be located in and intersect with Battery 519 as a dwelling that escapes permanent domestic status by reorganizing itself to house a functional public, cultural program as well.

Manifesto MOTIVES + AGENDA This project operates on the premise that architecture is increasingly becoming too infatuated with its own formal autonomy and spectacle, in an image-based society that seems worship the existence of the building as being “iconic,” “monumental,” and “heroic.” The building is in turn becoming viewed as a specific “product.” A contrasting species of anti-iconic, architecture of camouflage must exist to maintain the careful balance between the (apparent) ordinary and the extraordinary. This balance is critical to creative design as it creates a stable reference from which we can position and measure new things against. This proposal will examine the relationship between identity and connectivity in architecture as a cultural interface with our world. What is iconic? What is anti-iconic? What are the differences between public and private space, and can these different conditions function simultaneously or side by side? This project will employ the concept of “camouflage,” not just as a strategy of concealment against a given background, but as a device for us to define the self against a given cultural setting through the medium of representation—either by becoming part of that setting, or by distinguishing ourselves from it. As a flexible interpretation. "camouflage" will be the vehicle by which identities are created and transformed.

Manifesto RATIONALE I have chosen to address this topic of identiity in architecture because I believe that architecture today suffers from an unfortunate paradigm shift in the role technology plays in the design process. Architects are attempting to reinterpret generated complex forms into buildings that pretend to deny traditional forms of order—by twisting, wrinkling, distorting the basic form—without really altering the spatial system within it. This strategy yields a mere re-packaging of the same old ideas, yet is able to be marketed through the saturation of the image—it creates a collective fantasy of an idealized world, manipulating and deceiving the general public into believing in these “extraordinary” utopias. Today, even entire cities, e.g. Dubai, are comprised of this extraordinary fantasy. In this context, one must question what is actually extraordinary if everything is extraordinary? Thus, as a society, we must keep a healthy balance of the ordinary and the extraordinary which will allow individuality, originality, and creativy to continue to exist.

HYPOTHESIS PROVISIONAL SUPPOSITION TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS THEORETICAL PRECEDENTS PROGRAM SITE

HYPOTHESIS PROVISIONAL SUPPOSITION Some of the initial questions that I hope to address in this thesis are as follows: Can a single work of architecture be considered to be both iconic and anti-iconic? Can an intimate domestic space function in conjunction with a public program? Can a single work of architecture identify with the past and present simultaneously? Can camouflage function as an architecture tactic that is more than a formal â&#x20AC;&#x153;dressingâ&#x20AC;? of a building or space? Are abandoned gun batteries and military bunkers viable as a habitable space? Can a structure with such immense permanence as a concrete bunker be manipulated to function as a flexible space?

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS Alveole 14, Transformation of a Submarine Bunker Ghostbunker, Blockhaus DY10 Nazareth House Las Palmas Parasite Poli House Tourist Lodges in Ste Fereole Upward Extension of a Bunker

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS AlvĂŠole 14, Transformation of a Submarine Base Site: Architect: Date:

Saint-Nazaire, France LIN, Finn Geipel | Giulia Andi 2007

This project is the transformation of a submarine base into a venue for contemporary integrative forms of art and music. The concept refers on the one hand to the bunker's bizarre architectural form and on the other to the way it dominates the area around it. A ramp enables visitors to view the strange concrete structures on the building's giant roof. These were intended to ensure the premature detonation of bombs and to keep the impact from spreading to the rest of the building. By opening up two halls of the submarine bunker the architect has also created a line of sight between the city and the harbour. In addition pavilions have created space for cafĂŠs and shops. LIN completed the conversion by integrating a multi-functional exhibition area, a stage for contemporary music, a bar and a geodetic cupola on the roof of the bunker. A wide corridor joins the individual spaces. All the spatial elements which have been added can easily be identified as specially integrated structures, which enables the architects to highlight the contrast between the enormous fabric of the bunker and their own architectural interventions. The walls of the bunker have simply been cleaned, and retain their original patina. The illuminated cupola on the roof, which during the Cold War assisted Berlin's Tempelhof airport in monitoring eastern European airspace and was donated to the Saint-Nazaire bunker, almost gives the impression of being a memorial light and gives the surreal concrete giant something of the character of a cenotaph.

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS Ghostbunker, Blockhaus DY10 Site: Architect: Date:

Nantes, France BLOCK Architectes 2003

Ghostbunker is a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;thoroughly illegal occupation of Blockhaus DY10, a Second World War bunker that was turned into an arts venue. Blockhouse is a one-time WWII bunker that has been repurposed as an experimental arts facility. A ghosted image of the original structure elegantly floats above the thick, concrete bunker. This thickness helps shape the program of the new form, as the 2nd story circulation width parallels the thickness of the original bunkerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s outer walls. Passage is derived through what was designed to prevent just that. Form follows function follows irony follows poetry.

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS Nazareth House Site: Architect: Date:

Nazareth, Pennsylvania Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis 2007

The Nazareth House responds to the dueling demands of a conservative suburban design covenant and a steeply sloping topography. Neighborhood guidelines in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, dictated that the street facing elevation be given a standard pitched-roof form to comply with its neighbors—and with the rest of American suburbia. In light of these guidelines, LTL unapologetically planted an icon of suburbia, a garage door under a pitched roof, at the top of the house’s driveway. But this is where any similarity stops. Shifting the house 90 degrees, they minimize the elevational surface area falling under design guidelines. This carries the added advantage of optimizing solar orientation and desirable views, along with the opportunity to work with the site’s challenging topography rather than against it. The shape of the roof and house changes as it extends from the street elevation. Distorting and folding the roof, its form changes as it moves farther into the lot until it is ultimately manifested as a flat canopy over the back patio. This formal kineticism allows the house’s interior space to change as well, becoming increasingly open as it moves from garage to bedroom to kitchen to living room.

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS Las Palmas Parasite Site: Architect: Date:

Rotterdam, The Netherlands Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten 2001

A bright green object sitting on top of the elevator shaft of the former warehouse building Las Palmas acted in 2001 as a widely visible, three dimensional logo for its host building whose large, industrial spaces were temporarily used for various exhibitions during Rotterdam's year as European cultural capital in 2001. One of the exhibitions was called Parasites* and presented designs of smallscale objects for unused urban sites making 'parasitic' use of the existing infrastructure. The Las Palmas Parasite was a prototypical house aiming at combining the advantages of prefabricated technology and the unique qualities of tailor-made design. The limitations imposed by the size of the elevator shaft demanded a compact plan and volume. The object was supported by the walls of the existing building. Services like water supply, sewage and the electric installation had been linked to the existing installations. Walls, floors and roof had been made of solid laminated timber panels made from European waste wood. The elements were prefabricated, precut to size and delivered on site as a complete building package. The interior surfaces have been left untreated and uncovered, the exterior has been clad with painted plywood in large sheets. Openings are cut out as simple holes. Windows vary in size, character and position, celebrating the spectacular and highly varied views from its location surrounded by new urban developments and harbor activities.

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS Poli House Site: Architect: Date:

Coliumo, Chile Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects 2005

The work is located on the Coliumo peninsula, in a rural setting scarcely populated by farmers, independent fishermen and a few summer tourists. There, a compact and autonomous piece was built in order to capture at least two things: the sensation of a natural podium surrounded by vastness and the dizzying and wide open space produced by the sight of the sea washing against the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. The building functions both as a summer house and a cultural center. This established a contradictory use: the interior would have to mediate between a very public aspect and a more intimate and informal one. That is, it had to be both monumental and domestic without any of the negative aspects of either one affecting the other. Therefore, we decided not to name the rooms by function but instead to leave them nameless and functionless, just empty rooms with varying degrees of connection between them. Then we decided to organize all the service functions in an oversized perimeter (the functional width), inside a thick wall that acts as a buffer. That hollowed, empty space houses the kitchen, the vertical circulations, the bathrooms, the closets and a series of interior balconies that protect the windows from the sun (to the north) and the rain (to the west). The entire work was built with handmade concrete, using untreated wooden frames.

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS Tourist Lodges in Ste Fereole Site: Architect: Date:

Ste Fereole, France BLOCK Architectes 2008

This project aims to create a sustainable development and high-quality environmental thinking by limiting the project's impact on the environment and putting the future users in a pleasant architecture that is respectful of their health. The landscape concept is "to see without being seen”. The different parts of the program have been designed (pool, lodges…) so that everyone can enjoy the view, without being seen, but also to integrate the project in the general surrounding landscape by limiting its visual impact. Each lodge is designed as a small natural extension of the soil. Covered by land, each lodge tends to disappear in favor of a preserved landscape. The homes are scattered along the slope, in rows, providing each a view of the valley, limiting the vis-à-vis, and guarantees everyone great intimacy. Access to lodge is by pedestrian paths. All lodgings open to the west and southwest, to the valley, across a wide bay window. An exterior curtain is used to avoid any overheating due to the greenhouse effect in summer, but also to enable each to preserve its own intimacy. The bedrooms are situated on both sides of the living space to minimize circulation surfaces.

HYPOTHESIS TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS Upward Extension of a Bunker Site: Architect: Date:

Frankfurt, Germany Index Architekten 2005

The redesigning of Frankfurt’s east harbor, opened only in 1912, is considered one of the biggest challenges of the coming years in the field of city planning. The area around the large market hall is already being affected by structural change. However, the part of the east harbor lying behind that area seems like a different world. Here, in a no man’s land between heaps of gravel and dumps, piled-up recycling-products and containers that await their shipping, a bunker from the times of World War Two, temporarily masked as a house, stands at a dead straight, dusty street. Always in search of cheap space for artistic purpose, the idea to change this bunker into a cultural place and to define it as the motor for municipal transformation emerged. One reason for that was the leaking hip roof, as a repair of it would have been very expensive. However, a demolition was out of question because of the enormous costs. So the bunker turned somewhat into an elevated construction site. Like on a rock in the city, a carefully calculated wooden box will sit up there, harboring artists’ studios and the Institute for New Media. Inside the heavy concrete core, rooms for musicians to exercise will be installed. A circumferential opening up seizes the lightweight wooden box while turning the communal zone inside out in a dialogue with the city. At the same time, the opening up serves as an escape route to the outside. Not only do wall slices across the facade regulate the incidence of sunlight, they also enliven the structure of the facade.

HYPOTHESIS THEORETICAL PRECEDENTS Architecture and Disjunction Camouflage The Art of War The Camouflage House The Practice of Everyday Life

Tschumi Leach Weizman Garofolo de Certeau

HYPOTHESIS THEORETICAL PRECEDENTS Architecture and Disjunction Author: Concepts:

Bernard Tschumi Violence of Architecture, User vs. Space, Space vs. Program

“There is no architecture without action, no architecture without events, no architecture without program. By extension, there is no architecture without violence.” In the chapter titled “Violence of Architecture,” Tschumi goes on to discuss the relationships between the user, space, and program. All individuals inflict violence on spaces by their very presence, by their intrusion into the controlled order of architecture. The symbolic physical violence of buildings on users is possible; for example, the impact a narrow corridor may have on a large crowd. This spatial aggression may actually be desirable, countering the traditional view that architecture should be pleasing to the eye as well as comfortable to the body. Formal violence deals with the conflicts between objects, or architectural collisions, distortions, ruptures, compressions, fragmentations, and disjunction. Programmatic violence encompasses those uses, actions, events, and programs that, by accident or by design, are specifically evil and destructive. Similar to writers, architects can be playful with a sequence of spaces, organizing the program in a objective, detached, or imaginative way. Devices such as repetitions, distortions, or juxtaposition in the formal elaboration of walls could be used to reappropriate program and spaces, e.g. pole vaulting in the chapel. Conventional spaces could accommodate absurd activities, while perverse a organization of space could accommodate ordinary activities.

HYPOTHESIS THEORETICAL PRECEDENTS Camouflage Author: Concepts:

Neil Leach Connectivity, identity

“We human beings are governed by the urge to conform and blend in with our surroundings. We follow fashion. We become part of cultures of conformity—religious communities, military groups, sports teams; we take on corporate identities. Likewise, we seem to have the capacity to grow into our built environment, to familiarize ourselves with it, and eventually to find ourselves at home there. We have a chameleon-like urge to adapt, and, given the increasing mobility of contemporary life, we are constantly having to do so.” “Camouflage” is a tactic that involves a form of “surrender”—a becoming one with the surroundings—yet facilitates a subsequent “overcoming”—a differentiation of the self from the other. Camouflage operates within two extreme states of "melancholic withdrawal into the self and potentially fascistic loss of self in the other.” As an interface with the rest of the world, it is neither completely connected, nor completely detached. Rather, it involves a continual shuttling between these two conditions. As a masquerade that re-presents the self, a lasting impact can be had on questions of identity, and may actually contribute to a sense of self.

HYPOTHESIS THEORETICAL PRECEDENTS The Art of War Author: Concepts:

Eyal Weizman Walking through walls, reinterpreting conventional spatial boundaries

The tactics of “walking through walls” were developed by the Israeli military and employed in the urban attacks on the refugee camps in the city of Nablus in April 2002. They were developed, not in response to theoretical influences, but as a way of penetrating the previously impenetrable refugee camps. Aviv Kochavi, then commander of the Paratrooper Brigade, explained the principle that guided the attack: “This space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it [...] The question is: how do you interpret the alley? Do you interpret the alley as a place [...] to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden to walk through? This depends only on interpretation. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war...” “This is why that we opted for the methodology of walking through walls. […] Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. We were thus moving from the interior of homes to their exterior in a surprising manner and in places we were not expected, arriving from behind and hitting the enemy that awaited us behind a corner.”

HYPOTHESIS THEORETICAL PRECEDENTS The Camouflage House Author: Concepts:

Douglas Garofalo Tactics of camouflage, formal operations

Camouflage has always been a vehicle that has helped life evolve and survive in the living environment, whether it is in terms of insects, or in terms of military operations. Camouflage and its application to architecture can be analyzed as being a literal formal strategy, or as a series of tactics within the design process that deal with such operations as superimposition and fragmentation. “Garofalo presents the seductive possibility of a retooled formalist discourse that seeks to restore a primacy to architecture’s methods and operations.” “Garofalo has chosen not to exercise the most obvious option available to camouflage a suburban house; that is, to make it look like any other developer house. His use of camouflage must therefore be seen as an architectural device. It must be understood according to the conventions of representation and concretely located with the procedures of design [...] The project presented here exhibits a tactical appropriation of predetermined visual paradigms, fragmentation, complexity, superposition, without the corresponding commitment to a content ideological or conceptual- that such an appropriation might assume Garofalo's borrowings, in a tactical sense, are intended to be purely operational.” Garofalo has focused on problems with form, refusing to accept the forms or limits of known architectural languages as “given.” However, he does trust in the linearity and transmissibility of certain concepts within the procedures of architectural design, intending on using camouflage to “denature” the suburban house and destabilize its commodity status.

HYPOTHESIS THEORETICAL PRECEDENTS The Practice of Everyday Life Author: Concepts:

Michel de Certeau Strategy, tactics, identity

In “The Practice of Everyday Life, “ Michel de Certeau points out that social science, thus far, has lacked a formal means by which to examine the ways in which people actually reappropriate many aspects that make up “culture,” and instead generalize and categorize the human condition. As a result, individuality and identity can often be lost behind a cloak of conformity or overarching strategy. Certeau points out the difference between a “strategy” and “tactics.” A strategy is an entity that is recognized as an authority. It manifests itself physically in its site of operations (offices/headquarters) and in its products (laws, language, rituals, commercial goods, literature, art, inventions, discourse). It has use of dedicated resources, and is expected to incur considerable overheads. Because it represents an enormous investment in space (actual buildings and assets) and time (its own history, traditions), its ways are set. It cannot be expected to be capable of breaking up and regrouping easily, something which a tactical model does naturally. In other words, a strategy is relatively inflexible because it is embedded in its "proper", its "spatial or institutional localization". “By contrast with strategy [...] a tactic is a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. [...] The space of the tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and within a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power. It does not have the means to keep to itself, at a distance, in a position of withdrawal, foresight, and self-collection: it is a maneuver 'within the enemy's field of vision.”

HYPOTHESIS PROGRAM The house symbolizes the most primitive architectural object essential to architecture. It offers shelter and protects both physically and psychologically. It is created in a public or private space, it opens or closes, it manifests through its construction the emotional and symbolic content of the human being who inhabits a particular time and place. Being intimately related to our everyday lives, it is a physical expression of our own identity. As a house along the seaside, the drama of the landscapes, the contact with the elements, the framing of grandiose views, proximity and distance, all work together to merge architecture and sensuality. Spaces in these types of retreats tend toward versatility, and flexibility to respond to the changing needs of the residents, much like the way the Poli House in Chile partially escapes its domestic status as it doubles as a cultural space that contradicts the traditional intimacy of a home. This proposal will be a prototype for a dwelling or series of dwellings that intersect with existing abandoned military landscapes along coastal regions, i.e. bunkers, while preserving the historical integrity of the site. It will aim to mediate the dichotomy of opposing material and immaterial identities, and identities of public and private-- not only in the present, but also with careful sensitivity to the implications of the past histories of the site.

HYPOTHESIS SITE During World War II, the United States Army constructed hundreds of coastal defense structures to protect our harbors and coastlines. Currently, many World War II-era concrete batteries and tactical structures survive in very good condition due to their relatively recent construction and to the high quality of their cement work. However, many have been sealed, some buried, a few demolished, and others used as foundations for homes. High economic values for oceanfront property have been key drivers in the destruction of many of these World War II structures, even though the structures themselves were in excellent condition. The site for this proposal is the abandoned Fort Miles near Lewes, Delaware, a significant site in the United States Coastal Defense during WWII. The fort, nestled in the sand dunes along the Atlantic, was used to protect the cities of Philadelphia and Wilmington from Nazi U-Boats. Fire control towers were set up as baselines to triangulate the position of suspicious ships or submarines. Although Fort Miles was only forced to fire its guns once during the war, it did, however, capture the German U-858, the first German vessel to surender to the Allies. Many bunkers and batteries housing guns and other weapons were also constructed. At its peak, Fort Miles was home to over 2200 soldiers. Although it was declared surplus in 1948, it remains largely intact and unchanged since its use in WWII. This project will utilize the abandoned Battery 519 as a starting point for the intervention.

THESIS STATEMENT The traditional idea of the “dwelling” can simultaneously function under multiple identities, programs, and meanings by utilizing interpretations of “camouflage” as an architectural mediator--a viable strategy for utilizing a surplus of abandoned coastal defense structures as habitable space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ARTICLES + ESSAYS Caillois, Roger and John Shepley. “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia” October, Vol. 31 (Winter, 1984), pp. 16-32. Colomina, Beatriz. “War on Architecture” Assemblage, No. 20, Violence, Space (Apr. 1993), pp. 28-29. Garofalo, Douglas. “The Camouflage House” Assemblage, No. 21 (Aug., 1993), pp. 72-81. Kunze, Donald. “Architecture as Reading; Virtuality, Secrecy, Monstrosity” Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 41, No. 4 (Summer, 1988), pp. 28-37. Weizman, Eyal. “The Art of War: Deleuze, Guattari, Debord and the Israeli Defense Force” Radical Philosophy (March 2006). BOOKS de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984. Desmoulins, Christine. Living by the Sea Birkhauser Verlag AG, Basel 2008. Leach, Neil. Camouflage The MIT Press, Cambridge 2006. Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction The MIT Press, Cambridge 1996. Virilio, Paul. Bunker Archeologie Centre de Creation Industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1975.