Of the fallacy | A narrative of meta-contexts and transubstantiation

A masters research project presented to the Graduate School of Architecture and Community Design at the University of South Florida in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degreee of Masters of Architecture.

RESEARCH CHAIR

Prof. Nancy Sanders University of South Florida

PROJECT COMMITTEE

Levent Kara, Ph.D University of South Florida Dir. Bob MacLeod University of South Florida Jody Beck Traction Architecture Prof. Br yan Cantley California State University, Fullerton Daniel Johnson WRNS Studio, Stanford University

C h r i s t o p h e r

A l l e n

W e a v e r

To my family and friends who make this all possible, and for my professors that have guided me, never losing faith.

Without you, none of this could have ever happened.

THANK YOU

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE SCENE Aporia Epiporos

Raw Meat INTERLUDE Animation

Device 01

The Building in the Landscape

The Library

Device 02 Cyanotypes

The Building Dialogue Notes EPILOGUE List of Figures Bibliography

3 5 6 18 24 28 30 38 46 53 54 67 83 111 127 131 135 137

I have tackled this by following the same methodological principal, which consists of assuming the problem solved and deducing from this solution all the consequences that flow logically from it.

Father Sogol — Mount Analogue by RenÊ Daumal

1

Fig. 01. Blur

PROLOGUE

On 21 May 1944 Rene Daumal died, leaving behind an unfinished novel, Mount Analogue. Thirty five years later, Italo Calvino published If on a winter’s night a traveler, a meta-fiction obscured through fragmented story-lines. The enigma stirred by fragmentation as a literary device sparked a series of tangential creative works, characteristically of the fallacy. 1 Often overlooked, the space of errors is a space for creative leaps; through misdirection, a thing can evolve and mutate, morphing into something distinct yet intrinsically of the nature of what came before. A selection of fragments from a fragmented work; this project is a proto-architectural exploration of the origin of creative thoughts. The work jumps around seemingly at random; at times it was easy to lose sight of the glass threads that bound the disparate elements together, yet the constellation they form is deeply embedded in the methods and processes employed; a series of ingrained control devices that enabled distant leaps without severing the umbilical cords that tethered one thing to the next. Inverted logics of start and finish, imaginative interventions in liminal conditions, the use of drawing as a generative device for thoughts, and the construction of devices to architecturalize the space of media transformations all coalesced together into the creation of an architectural device. A space that consecrated shadows. Beyond the scope of this individual project, this work argues for the value of tangential outbreaks and fertile fallacies as nesting grounds for the development of ideas. By eliminating the need for a pre-defined “final� outcome, the opportunity opens up for creative inquiry to take the lead in guiding research towards a productive end, ensuring a place for the vigor of passion as the student never tires of their own investigative leads

Notes 1 Fallacy understood as erroneous or misleading.

3

Fig. 02. Epiporos Fragment

OF THE FALLACY

SCENE A Jury Room, mostly dim. A series of Artifacts, under spotlights, line the Wall. The audience settles as the Jury members take their seats.

LE CONSEILLER

THE STUDENT

[standing to the side of the Wall, Le Conseiller raises her arm in introduction of The Student, and then slips out of view to take a seat as the murmuring crowd quiets.] [taking a deep breath, arms crossed behind his back clutching a page-worn sketchbook, a moment passes in silence before The Student finds words]

The thesis year for me began with a vague understanding of certain processes to be explored – of certain methods of making – as well as with a collection of readings that were begging to be delved into. A habit evolved of reading a thing and then making a thing in response;1 all with an emphasis on allowing for it to develop as a whole based upon whatever elements came into play. These early readings delved into hermeneutics and surrealism,2 thus the making became focused on the way a thing can morph, shift, or evolve over time as layers of interpretations, adaptations, or iterations accumulate: the continuation of a thing going through change.3 5

With a hesitant desire to start, the first thing made was this CAD “drawing” here — [twisting away from the wall, The Student gestures towards the first set of Artifacts: Aporia, and it’s raw constituents]

Aporia pulled from things that I was seeing around me and things that I had been doing. I had a pad of mylar that I made, because I had never used the material before and I wanted to experiment with it, and I was just drawing in it while I was reading these different things. I also was taking photos of things that I was finding of interest; and so I compiled together things (like a stain on the wall of the building, a model that had been lying on the ground, a random file I had found in the scanner folder downstairs) and I tried to turn them into something that was taking these disparate elements and going from it.

APOR

Fig. 03. Seed Material

IA

Fig. 04. Aporia 7

Fig. 05. Hard Drive

The originary exercises were dubbed the Aporias, a title deriving from the rhetoric term for initiating a logical argument with a real, or feigned, expression of doubt, (the possible falsity of the term instigated an intrigue with the fallacious).

The first Aporia, subtitled ‘preconstructable architecture as a reliquary for the nonknown in thought,’ began as an exploration of the trace and the index,4 taking source, or seed, material that piqued interest, which were then digitally traced, altered, computer-drafted upon, and photoshopped into the mapping-esque graphicdrawing , that hoped to capture through these proto-architectural conditions some transient understanding of the research direction. It can also mean an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory (posing doubt as an internal contradiction).

It can be further understood by breaking it apart into its component roots (in Greek a- : without ; -poros : passage). Doubt as impassibility; internal contradictions creating impassibility: what is in passage? communication? Internal contradictions as thresholds that break the passage of discourse (hence the need for an internal logic of naming).

9

THE STUDENT

The drawing process began with a patchwork 5 collage upon which mylar was layered and drawn upon, a process which also spawned a fascination with automatism (and later automata).6 Once again pulling together elements of interest and making from them, what began as one drawing was later severed into pieces, focusing attention to the more successful portions of this drawing.

Unnamed Drawing began with a glitch.

In Rhino there is a command – smash – to unroll complex forms into fold-able planes. Yet in this instance, an erratic smash created a weird sprawl of things that were all overlapping and intersecting in a way that they normally would not, This created an intriguing form, so I started to work into them. Also, at this time cyanotypes first showed a presence, enigmatic in the way that they are become a memory, or a trace, of a set of conditions that exists,

Fig. 06. Unnamed Drawing 11

came st the awing, notated awing, lowing evolve neously and he act became of osophy walking by the g, i.e. form hrough space. fect of as that nt of horical of the awing. iagram n from project facing as it rawing read anners ram of greed, ssional literal utation ent was interest hip to porary of the tiplicity , and ndition t itself licity of

but is yet removed

THE STUDENT

Moving on from this, the focus shifted from media to content, until this point there had never been any explicit subject matter, rather a focus on the nature of the objects and the methodologies of their production; I kept drawing, but nothing really.. I felt like if maybe I had some subject matter it would help to provoke the drawing further. At a loss for what to do, I read a book: If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino, a story constructed from fragments, a nature that would come to infest the entire project. Towards the end of the book there was a line that literally sent chills through my body when I read it: The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life and the inevitability of death.7 There was something about these words, not only were they chilling, but they rang some reminiscence to the words of Bernard Tschumi in the Manhattan Transcripts: Perhaps all architecture, rather than being about functional standards, is about love and death.8 This triggered an interest in these themes of continuity and inevitability, as well as their relationship to another condition. During the early meditations upon these themes, another error occurred: every time I would tell people about these words, even think about them, I said continuity and finality. How does finality differ from inevitability, and what are the roles of these terms in architectural thinking? Or in ways of making? These were amongst the many questions guiding the tangent leading from here.

Fig. 07. Sketchbook Scans

As thoughts to mind amids act of dra they were n into the dra unintentionally all the drawing to into simultan the pilgrimage the reliquary. Th of drawing b reminiscent peripatetic philo with the act of w being replaced b act of drawing drawing as a of walking th conceptual Another side eff this process wa the developmen various metaph interpretations o content of the dra The overall di was initially taken a sketch for a p set on the beach the ocean, yet progressed the dr began to be in different m such as a diagr consumption, or or a confes booth, or of a reliquary. This mu of symbolic conte of particular i in its relationsh the contemp understanding o existence of a mult of perspectives, 13 within this, the con of a work that contains a multipl

came st the awing, notated awing, lowing evolve neously and he act became of osophy walking by the g, i.e. form hrough space. fect of as that nt of horical of the awing. iagram n from project facing as it rawing read anners ram of greed, ssional literal utation ent was interest hip to porary of the tiplicity , and ndition t itself licity of

THE STUDENT

As I was exploring these themes, I started finding a variety of different contexts that were showing these themes, and I started developing a scheme which led to this drawing on the ground on the right here. [gestures to Epiporos upon one of two light-boxes lying on the floor illuminating the content of the layers of mylar situated upon the glowing surface]

Fig. 08. Light Boxes

This drawing began as a quick sketch diagramming a scheme of a project on a beach: a wall situated in parallel with the shore, completely obstructing the view of the ocean save for a single moment of connection. This diagram was initially an absent minded doodle triggered by the comment of a critic during a random jury, but it came to serve another purpose as the investigation continued.

Fig. 09. Wall Sketch

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THE STUDENT

Everything is nothing with a twist. The apparent lack of content was a struggle. Yet, somehow the content couldn’t have been more clear. This was a drawing of/for an architectural thesis, and in merging the condition of the thing with the context of the thing, the typical line of thought was inverted. Working through these ideas, it clicked like magic: this drawing exploring these themes of continuity/finality/inevitability had content in it’s context, and as such it became about a Jury. This exact jury. So I began diagramming the jury.

The movement, the thoughts, the conversation, the work, the impact, or lack thereof in some cases, and all through this, the drawing began to emerge. The Wall, the pin-up, the moment of connection; where internal dialogue could become external. This drawing was an attempt to understand what the final jury of this thesis would be like, without having known what the thesis even was yet.

Fig. 10. Stamp Tool

1 - POTENTIAL OF [NOT] KNOWING/UNDERSTANDING TOTALITY OF WORK 2 - ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS: FIRST OF LINES CAME FROM OFF OF PAGE; IS THIS SIGNIFICANT? 3 - IS INTUITIVE DRAWING ANAL TIONSHIP BETWEEN FREEHAND AND DRAFTED? 7 - TAKING A FRAGMENT OF A THOUGHT AND USING IT FOR ANOTHER 8 - LINE-TYPES AS DIFF TYPES OF THOUGHT ; WHAT ARE DIFF TYPES OF THOUGHT? 9 - AD

Fig. 11. Epiporos Fragment 17

LOGOUS TO BUILDING PROCESS PRE-ALBERTI’S CONCEPT OF ARCHITECT? 4 - HOW CAN THE DRAWING INFORM ITS OWN RULES? 5 - WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERSECTIONS? 6 - WHAT IS THE RELA DAPTING TO CONTEXTUAL SHIFTS ; REMOVAL/ADDITION OF LAYERS / TRANSITIONS FROM FH TO DR 10 - WHAT HAPPENS WHEN UNAWARE/IGNORANT OF CONTEXT? 11 - HOW TO RESPOND/REPAIR ACTIONS

Fig. 12. Epiporos

TAKEN WITHOUT REGARD TO CONTEXT? 12 - WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LINES MEET? OR DON’T MEET? 13 - WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LINES END? CRITIQUE CONSUMERISM? HOW DO WE CONSUME IMAGES? DOES A THOROUGH READING STAND IN CONTRAST TO THE CONSUMED IMAGE?

14 - WHAT OCCURS AFTER LINES END? POST-ENDS? 15 - WH 20 - WHAT IS THE ARCHITECTURAL EXPRESSION OF LAYERS OF M

19

HAT ARCHITECTURE IS EXPRESSED BY THESE LINES? 16 - WHAT IS THE ‘PACE’ OF A LINE? 17 - WHAT ARE SHADOWS IN THIS CONTEXT? 18 - HOW CAN A LINE CHANGE PACE? 19 - HOW CAN A DRAWING MYLAR? 21 - WHAT IS DIFF B/T THE ARCH OF MYLAR AND THE ARCH OF VELLUM/BRISTOL/OTHER SURFACES/MEDIA? 22 - WHAT IS THE MYLAR EQUIVALENT OF LOOKING THROUGH TIME? 23 - HOW CAN THE

THE STUDENT

Reaching into the indeterminate incidentally opened up the drawing to a multiplicity of meanings, which allowed for the drawing to metamorphosize into something new. As thoughts came to mind during the act of drawing they were notated into it, which let the drawing evolve into a record of it’s own making. Furthermore, the act of drawing became reminiscent of peripatetic philosophy; walking as a mode of thinking became drawing as a mode of thinking, i.e. drawing as a form of walking through conceptual space or space of thought.

Most of these thoughts wound up being questions, many of which were reflexive inquiries into the nature of the activity of drawing itself; questioning the significance of the relationship between successive lines, the shift in thinking between the placement of the originary line and those placed much later, the manner with which these lines created their own context and how further lines responded or avoided responding to those that preceded them. This act turned into somewhat of a game, as new layers of mylar were added the order with which they overlaid was manipulated, allowing for different distributions of contextual marks, sometimes layers were removed altogether only to be reinserted later after new lines had developed in their absence.

This created conflicting sets of lines that were both responding to their own contextual sets, yet when merged became conflicted, instigating a process of mediating this contextual tension, in the aim of creating a cohesive whole. This instilled a curiosity into the nature of the liminal condition present between these different context-sets, each layer of mylar, as well as between the contextual marks and their containing elements, between the ink and the mylar.

EPIPO

DRAWING SHIFT SCALES? IN WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WOULD IT NEED TO? 24 - ELECTRICAL DIAGRAMMING SYMBOL FOR ‘EARTH-GROUND’ 25 - LOGIC SYMBOL FOR ‘FORCES’ ; A RELATIONSHIP B/T POSSIBLE W TO DRAWING 28 - WHAT OCCUPIES THE SPACE WITHIN A LINE? IS THIS THE THIRD SPACE BETWEEN PILGRIMAGE AND RELIQUARY? 29 - WHAT IS A SILENT LINE? WHAT WOULD ITS SPACE BE? 30 - LINES OF OC

The relationships between names and natures is of critical importance;9 thus, upon recognizing that this drawing separated itself from its predecessors, a new word was sought for the title of this new drawing series. Building upon the earlier etymological investigation, this new word sought to have an intrinsic relation/contradiction to the duplicitous doubt, or passage obstruction, instilled by aporia. It became clear that this would be achievable by keeping with the Greek origin, and after a little research attention came to the prefix epi-, which simultaneously means upon, before, and after (once again emphasis is upon the multiplicity of interpretations present in the meaning).

Thus came Epiporos: the state of being at once before, amidst, and after passage; passage being perhaps a communication, a process, (the act of drawing/making), a narrative, the change of a thing over time, etc.

Epiporia being a moment of passage, the end of the moment coupled with the birth of the moment following becoming in their dialectical unity the act of the moment at present. An acknowledgment must be made that this word doesn’t feel to intrinsically talk about doubt within these moments, yet it could be used to talk about situations where the distinctions between continuity/finality/ inevitability are blurred, a condition that carries an affective relationship to aporia as a device, both can serve to open up a space for other things.

ROS

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WORLDS AND SENTENCES IN MODAL LOGIC 26 - WHO IS THE OCCUPANT OF THE DRAWING? 27 - DRAWING AS PILGRIMAGE ; DRAWING AS RELIQUARY ; SURFACE AS RELIQUARY FOR INK ; INK AS PILGRIMAGE CCLUSION? OR DISSOLUTION? 31 - DOES THE CONTEXT RESPOND TO THE HIERARCHY? OR DOES THE HIERARCHY RESPOND TO THE CONTEXT? 32 - DESIGN DRAWING TEMPLATES/TOOLS. HOW DO THE TOOLS

THE STUDENT

In an effort to understand the liminal space between the layers of mylar, or the ink and the mylar, a shift in scales occurred where an imaginative space was projected into the ink and the mylar creating an entire world within them in order to facilitate an understanding of the space between them. An initial scheme was once again developed in sketches, and proposed that the mylar-space would subdivided internally creating depths through which the ink would travel over time.

Fig. 13. Sketchbook Scans

INFORM THE DESIGN? WHAT IS THE ARCH OF FRENCH CURVES? OR TRIANGLES AND STRAIGHT EDGES? 33 - HOW DO GRADATIONS ON TOOLS IMPACT DESIGN DECISIONS? 34 - DOES PERSPECTIVE ENHANCE WHAT ARE THE DIMENSIONS ENCAPSULATED WITHIN A LINE? 37 - SPEED OF LINES FEELS EXPRESSION THROUGH DURATION OF UNDISTURBED TRAVEL [RELATED TO DUCHAMP’S INTERP OF A UNIT METER IN THREE S

The pen and eraser began to work as enzymes activating a phase-shift within the confines of the mylarsubstrate. Neural responses within the synaptic cleft were seen as a precedent for the interactions occurring at the surface of the mylar. In this context, an automaton inspired by synthetic anti-depressive drugs, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), began to regulate the passage of ink through the internal divisions of the mylar. This horological ink re-uptake inhibitor (HIRI) established a rhythmic temporailty to the world through monitoring and controlling the passage of ink through the subdivisions within each cell-column, ultimately preventing the ink’s removal from the mylar.

These mylar-divisions were further segmented, with the topmost layers existing above the threshold of smear (the space in which the smearing of ink between neighboring cell columns is most probable), which is separated by a tertiary neutral-zone from the bottommost layers of highsecurity internment, from which it is near impossible for the ink to escape.

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OR DIMINISH SPATIAL SUGGESTIVENESS? 35 - WHAT IS THE ROLE OF DISTRACTORS? ARE THEY GOOD? CAN THE TEST THE OBSERVER’S ATTENTIVENESS? 36 - HOW CAN LINES TRANSCEND PLAN AND SECTION? STANDARD STOPPAGES ; THE STRAIGHT LINE IS A FAST METER, THE BENT/CROOKED/SCATTERED/DISRUPTED/WANDERING LINE IS THE SLOW METER] 38 - THE TOOLS IMPLY NEW WAYS OF DRAWING AND IN THEIR

ure of the that would the depths ar reminded ething else, hat was not present in this yet became tant for later it must be tessellation s reminded e commonly structure Library of he Endless Hexagonal nt).

Faintly wing, fading spective, the allery can be t’s relevance surfaced in oment ,I had this possibly ntal escape, sical escape an that had ed in these cells, and nnel through n an attempt whereupon this weird space that utside the f the rigid had known.

Fig. 14. Raw Meat Render

LIMITATIONS URGE CREATIVE INTERPRETATIONS PUSHING HAND TO FIND NEW LINES

39 - WHAT IS EXPRESSED BY LINE DENSITY?

40 - ERASURE AS A TOOL FOR EXTENDING DEPTH [PHYSICAL AND TEMPORAL]

41

THE STUDENT

1 - WHAT IS LAYER DEPTH? TIME/HISTORY?

Once the scheme from the sketches was adapted into a larger scale drawing, the diagram they suggested felt to be creating an overly rigid spatial construct for this liminal world. Thus, there was a shift in tactics, and an exercise in formal exploration began. Tracing from the first Epiporos created foundational lines upon which an invigorated pencil loosely ran across the page in search of a formal embodiment of the mylar-space. The mylar filled with graphite yet no forms felt satisfactory, and in this hampered state an idea formed: instead of finding the forms through drawing, to find them through erasure. Out of the graphite smudged sheet of mylar, forms were drawn through swift strokes of an eraser. Worlds merged with a media shift as the mylar was scanned, bringing the drawing-surface into a digital context where the forms evolved into a complex, and possibly grotesque, spatial condition that carries visceral memories, a synthetic flesh.

The structu cells that subdivide of the myla me of some something th completely p drawing, y more import so note of made. The of the cells me of the conceived of Borges’ Babel (Th Infinite Arrangemen in this draw away in pers hexagonal ga found, but it wasn’t fully this. For a mo considered t as the men or even phys of a Libraria been trappe repetitious thought to tun the walls in to escape, they found amorphous existed ou confines of world they h 25

42 - WHAT LIES WITHIN THE SPACE BETWEEN EACH LAYER OF MYLAR? OR IN THE SPACE BETWEEN THE INK AND THE MYLAR? WHAT IS THE OCCUPANT OF THIS SPACE?

The rendered digital model was printed out and then inserted beneath the layers of mylar to be drawn upon again.

Fig. 15. Raw Meat

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1

Draw a line.

Draw another line.

Draw another line.

Repeat until a closed, non overlapping loop is formed.

This will be known as a closed polyline.

2

Draw step 1 repeatedly, each closed polyline remaining individually non-overlapping, yet draw each successive layered polyline variably overlapping its brethren.

[Through the overlap, the forms develop in complexity beyond that contained within the individual closed polylines.]

3

Traces paths through the complexity, creating hierarchy in the overlap by drawing lines of a greater weight.

These lines may be either open or closed.

4

Apply hatching or toning to these descendant line sets, bringing hierarchy to these newfound forms Fig. 16. Last Minute Caffeinated Drawings

29

THAT WHICH OCCURS WHEN A LIZARD’S TAIL HAS GROWN SO LONG THAT IT FALLS OFF AND GROWS ITS OWN LIZARD.

Fig. 17. Pataphor Animation (above)

THE STUDENT

So, at this point there was a bit of a leap, at the beginning of this next semester I was trying to think about how I could tie together these vastly different drawings, I was acknowledging that I had a whole bunch of disparate elements and I was just trying to think about what could be done to start to bring these different things together (though perhaps incidentally the action taken wound up giving me more things on the plate, but most importantly it helped to keep me going and it was fun). It came to me in what felt like a moment of crisis, I hadn’t really put a lot of effort into thesis during the two weeks of winter break, and on the morning of meeting with my professor coming back, and I was concerned about having nothing to talk about. Stressed over this, I just started drawing, and I drew an animation in the corner of my sketchbook of a square that got deconstructed, and then kind of ate itself and became a square again. [leans his sketchbook towards the audience, showing them the square brought to motion by the flipping of the pages] I had so much fun doing this, it was a blast! So I decided, “Okay! I’m gonna do animations!” With that, I set out to animate this drawing. [points to the Epiporos drawing]

31

THE STUDENT

Hand drawn frame-by-frame, the process of giving motion to lines was a tedious one. A lot of what was done was just playing around with how to make the lines move across the page. Exploring the timing and sequencing of an animation posed a new challenge as it was something that I had never thought about before. As such, most of these animations were all experiments with the media.

Fig. 18. When Lines Meet

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THE STUDENT

Yet, rather than serving to condense the diverse content of the previous semester, these animations had only added another element to the mix.

Since those animations had already been coming out of this drawing, I decided I would make a model that came out of this drawing. [gesturing again to the Epiporos drawing] The model pulled from the form of the wall condition. As the model progress, I still wasn’t sure how it would stand in relation to the animations. For a while I had considered just putting an animation above a model, placing them side by side for a back and forth reflection of similar things in expressed in different media, but then when I was walking through some of the core design studios they had these models with a lot of transparency to them, and I was struck with the idea to project the animations through the model. This called for the model to evolve and develop layers of transparency in addition to the opaque form that had already been developed.

Fig. 19. Wall-pace Model (opposite)

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Fig. 20. Wall-space Construct

37

Fig. 21. The First Device (above)

THE STUDENT

The condition of projecting the animations through a model felt like an articulation of a liminal space: an expansion followed by a compression as the space of the mylar was exploded into multiple dimensions through the interaction of a three-dimensional media (the model) and a fourth-dimensional, time-based, media (the animation).

Thus, it felt a waste to merely project the animation through. Two things became certain with this realization: one, that an architectural device, both spatial and tectonic, needed to be invented for this task, and two, that this device need be capable of recording this multidimensional process. And thus was born the first device. [gestures to the first device, projecting spastically in the corner]

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Fig. 22. The Device Arranged

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Fig. 23. Projection-Space

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Fig. 24. Conception of a Thought

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THE STUDENT

The intention for this recording device capturing the interaction between this time-based media and this three-dimensional object, the light and the shadow, was to create a cyanotype. Unfortunately however, the projector light was too dim to expose a cyanotype, informing the process needed to be re-envisioned, but I was able to pull from it some great images that helped to lead into the next steps of the process. At this point I had started to develop two lines of working: the one was developing these devices and how I was going to continue and make at least a successful cyanotype, and the other line was the realization that the meeting of a three-dimensional object and the folding of the two-dimensional surface that it was touching onto carried a strong resemblance to the way a building could meet a landscape, the way the object sits down into the surface was the same kind of condition.

Fig. 25. The Composites (above)

THE STUDENT

So I wanted to start to explore this building condition that would come out of these processes. So, in the beginning of doing that, I started by taking the model that had been made for that drawing and photoshopcollaging into it more photos of the model, photos of rendering outputs from Rhino that had been rough works of just trying to figure out what I was making, and then photos of this whole process occurring (that I did in a dark room), and that’s where these came from. Then, these were brought into software and I started to 3D model off of them. At this point, I started thinking again: What is the content of this? What is the program of this building? What is this building housing?” And I feel that was the instinct because when we go through design studios you’re always given a program, so if I’m gonna design a building, the first thing I need is a program.

47

X

M Q

Z

W

T M P

V Y U

L R K

O

S

D G J C F B H A

E

I

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Process exploring the building, the landscape, and the device. Searching for their interrelations between each-other as well as to the Library. Encoding “meaning.�

Fig. 26. Paper Doodles (above and opposite)

49

Fig. 27. Prociere

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THE STUDENT

So, I fell into looking at the Library of Babel again. I had already touched on it earlier in what I was doing so it was in my mind, and I wanted to be somewhat more conscious of it before engaging with it.

So, I went back and I reread the story like ten times, cause it’s a short story pretty quick and easy to read, and as I went through I started to try and literally reconstruct the Library as he describes it. And Borges is known for his mathematical accuracy in every one of stories, he purposefully only writes short stories because of the fact that it was a short amount of pages that he could know confidently that he had controlled every element, and that it would fit into what he was trying to say. So, with this I started picking up the details and trying to reconstruct this Library, and I found this

error.

[stares at audience, eyes crazed with glee over the fallacious parable of which all are a part] Basically, at the beginning of the story, there’s a paragraph of text that explains the structure of the library: it’s these hexagonal galleries four sides of which have long shelves, and of the two remaining free sides, one leads to a hallway that connects to an identical gallery, and off of the hallway there’s a closet and a place to sleep and an infinite stairway up and down, an infinite spiral staircase up and down.

However, he very specifically only says that there is one passageway off of each hexagonal gallery. Well, if you try to construct an infinite library out of one passageway, you can’t have infinite horizontality, you can only have infinite verticality. So, it completely shatters the image that he was portraying in the story. To me, there’s no way this was an accident, the amount of accuracy that he has. I did the research, he corrected errors in the same paragraph in early manuscripts, but a matter of a few words away, he left that. So, it seems as if it was almost conscious. It was really fun doing the research of it, there were even forums online where people were arguing over this, and they were saying things such as: “oh no, he just made a mistake, this is the perfect gallery” and “this is the perfect library” and they show an image of a honeycombed pattern going on forever. So, from there I decided, alright I’m gonna construct this Library, and it’s just infinite verticality, and I’m going to use this error as a point of departure, where I’m going to begin to insert in my story, the idea that some librarian got tired of looking through these volumes of nonsensical, meaningless, randomly generated text, and instead let go of it and started to just live and make something for themselves. So there was this point of exit from the library that led to this new architecture.

Fig. 28. Library (In)vert (opposite)

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THE STUDENT

At the same time that this was developing, I was also designing the second device, which would utilize the sunlight to cast the cyanotypes (because the projector light wasn’t bright enough, and using the sunlight seemed more intriguing to me than using a UV bulb) It had these mirrored strips that work to magnify the light and concentrate it down to a lens that would angle it back out to give a more “controlled� placement of the light upon a surface that was filtered by a model, a construct that was starting to tie together the different ideas about the building that I had been coming up with, or trying to find their relationship in this landscape.

Fig. 29. Mirror-Lens System 55

A device as thing. A device. A (intended to be) self-mediating object that constructed space of hazy media. Yet, contradictorily treated in a way to emphasize its objectness. Containing a space set aside for the confluence of things. Shielding from view while at the same time serving to keep a record of a process of transformation. A precisely blunt object; controllably enabling a haphazard process, the device enabled the production of enigmatic forms.

Fig. 30. The Second Device

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Conception of an idea. The device becoming the architectural object.

An exploration of the way it situates itself in relation to the threshold, and the “textual� landscape of the universe (also known as the library).

Fig. 31. Locating the Building in the Landscape

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Fig. 32. Digital Meditations on the Building (above and opposite)

61

Fig. 33. Shadow Construct

63

Device inhabited. Questions of scale?

Occupants as figures captured by the activity of the device. Landscape existing within device, device set in landscape. What is the role of the device? What is role? Is role a necessity? is a dysfunctional function still a function? A device is implicitly functional, perhaps in search of a functional uselessness.10

Fig. 34. Scales of Occupation

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THE STUDENT

As the shadow construct came together I began to implement it into the device, creating cyanotypes, as well as exploring it out of the confines of the device with full sunlight to evaluate the workings of the design as a reference to the evolution of the building. These surfaces were generated all at different phases of the creation of this model; some were just the structure of it, others incorporated the piano wire, and as some of the other layers came into it more were done. The variety informed the possibility of ephemera; conditions caught in chaotic blur and their relation to that sustained in clarity.

Fig. 35. The Cyanotype Surfaces

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Fig. 36. Surface 1 86

Fig. 37. Surface 2 07

Fig. 38. Surface 3 27

Fig. 39. Surface 4 47

Fig. 40. Surface 5 67

Fig. 41. Surface 6 87

Fig. 42. Unfolded Surfaces

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THE STUDENT

During the process of making the cyanotypes it fully clicked that the building itself could become the next iteration of the device. Addressing some of the observations from using the previous device, I began to redesign the device as an occupiable building. These images here are the evolution of this device-building. Its basic essence consists of a threshold that mediates the amount of light that comes into the overall space, bringing emphasis to the central element that rotates along its axis to track the motion of the sun. As this one piece rotates to track the altitude of the sun, the building itself sits on a track that allows it to rotate along an arc following the daily path of the sun. As the sun rises in the morning the building starts its motion, following the sun, allowing for this one single space within it to be in constant illumination. As I was designing it I played around with the possibility of there being several caretakers that resided within this building. At first their abode was in the threshold alongside the device itself, but it started becoming too cluttered there, and I pulled them away, and I’ve been playing around with their placement on the landscape in association with the building.

Fig. 43. Finding the Building

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Fig. 44. Building Print 1

85

Fig. 45. Building Print 2

87

Fig. 46. Buidling Print 3

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Fig. 47. Making the Landscape

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Fig. 48. Adding the Rotation Track

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Fig. 49. The Building Animated

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Fig. 50. The Building Animated (again)

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Fig. 51. The Building Animated (still more)

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Fig. 52. The Building Animated (that’s a lot of frames...)

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Fig. 53. really?

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Fig. 54. Animated into the Landscape

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Fig. 55. Motion of the Device

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In a bizarre irony what began with the intention of using the interaction between the modeled projections and the manipulated surface as a case study for the development of a building in a landscape, the outcome wound up to be essentially floating above the landscape.

Although disconnected physically, perhaps in the way it traverses the space it becomes an active figure in the experience of the landscape.

Fig. 56. See Top of Page For Image Title

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JURY

?s r e ka t e ra c dias u oY :u o y rof noitseu q kciu q eno e v ah I seY ?snairarbil yeht erA

CITIRC CIRETOSE EHT TNEDUTS EHT CITIRC CIRETOSE EHT

saw ereh tnemele sihT — taht thguoht eht dah I — er’yeht taht kniht I dna ecaf rus siht hguorht gnirutcnup y rarbil eht fo esacriats larips eht taht snairarbil eht erew eseht oS .sedoba rieht depoleved yeht neht yb detanicsaf er’yeht won dna tnereffid gnihtemos otni hguorht ekorb ..ecived siht edam ev’yeht dna siht

TNEDUTS EHT

kaerb yeht retfa gnidliub eht ni kcab ssecca deined yeht era oS ?hguorht

CITIRC CIRETOSE EHT

DIALOGUE sa raf sa ,ssecca evah yeht kniht I ..taht tuoba thguoht ton dah I erew ye h t ,raf os edam e v ’I gnih t y r e v e ro ,n w a r d e v ah I gnihty re ve etinifni eht tuoba gnihtemos si ereht kniht I tub ,kcab ssecca nevig eva h uoy t i f o sh tp ed eh t n i gni v il e r e w u oy fi t aht ,y r a r bil eht fo e rut an reven yam uoy taht gnola tniop emos ta eceip a si siht taht aedi on ,ereh won era taht elpoep eht htiw emas eht dna ,efil ruoy ni ssap eb dluow yeht naht erom hcum htiw tcaretni yllaer reven dluow yeht ..ot klaw ot elba

TNEDUTS EHT

]ecnelis drawkwa esnet[ —dnA !hO

?thgir gniward ylrae na si sihT

TNEDUTS EHT T N EI TAP MI E H T

]repap hparg no hcteks ot gnitniop[ ?oga skeew eerhT ..oga skeew owt saw taht ,oN ?tahT .hO retnirp resal eht no gnitnirp neeb evah I ,oS ..segami eseht ,os tuB dna ,flesym thguob dah I taht repap kcots drac resal a htiw sriatsnwod sgniht fo hcnub a detnirp I dna sretnirp eht hguorht ti gninnur saw I kni eht htiw deneppah gnihtemos ,stnirp fo seires siht no neht tub ,enif eht fo t rap eno morf kni eht fo lla dna detfihs ti dna dengilasim ti dna semitemos dna egami eht fo t rap tnereffid a no desopsnart tog egami yawa gnikalf tsuj si kni eht dna ,egap ot egap morf revo dedlof ti

TNEDUTS EHT T N EI TAP MI E H T TNEDUTS EHT

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THE ESOTERIC CRITIC THE STUDENT THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

I have one quick question for you: You said caretakers?

Yes Are they librarians?

THE STUDENT

I think that they’re — I had the thought that — This element here was the spiral staircase of the library puncturing through this surface and then they developed their abodes. So these were the librarians that broke through into something different and now they’re fascinated by this and they’ve made this device..

THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

So are they denied access back in the building after they break through?

THE STUDENT

I had not thought about that.. I think they have access, as far as everything I have drawn, or everything I’ve made so far, they were given access back, but I think there is something about the infinite nature of the library, that if you were living in the depths of it you have no idea that this is a piece at some point along that you may never pass in your life, and the same with the people that are now here, they would never really interact with much more than they would be able to walk to.. [tense awkward silence]

THE STUDENT THE IMPATIENT

Oh! And— This is an early drawing right? [pointing to sketch on graph paper]

THE STUDENT THE IMPATIENT THE STUDENT

That? No, that was two weeks ago.. Three weeks ago?

Oh. But so, these images.. So, I have been printing on the laser printer downstairs with a laser card stock paper that I had bought myself, and I was running it through the printers and I printed a bunch of things fine, but then on this series of prints, something happened with the ink and it misaligned and it shifted and all of the ink from one part of the image got transposed on a different part of the image and sometimes it folded over from page to page, and the ink is just flaking away

doing what it wants, and I couldn’t be happier because it came out way better than the graphics originally were..

THE IMPATIENT

THE STUDENT THE IMPATIENT THE STUDENT THE IMPATIENT

THE STUDENT

Okay, this is a really great story, but what is the lesson of the story?

Can you just — like — three sentences? What is the lesson of this? [pauses at a loss for what to say] No, you should be very clear, you know? [actual comment removed because it was terribly lame] You mentioned a couple of names.. Some philosophers, some poetry right? What is your contribution to the notion of process, architectural process, via something like this? [pauses to think] Contribution? I don’t know if it’s an original contribution, but I think part of it was becoming aware of the way one thing informs another. I think the two things you had me read early on impacted me a lot, the surrealist manifesto, which shook me, and Gadamer on Hermeneutics, and I saw a connection between those, and actually between those and something else that I haven’t talked about because I don’t even feel like I—

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

Do you consider this process hermeneutic in nature?

Not necessarily, because I think what I’ve done is different, though it was inspired by that. The process began with a thing, and then pulled an interpretation of it, which became the new thing, and this continued on progressing and evolving. But I’m not sure if my process was precisely what they…

It seems that during your narrative — because I don’t really look at this as much as process as I do as kind of a narrative of how you’ve done this. You’ve constructed kind of a story, and you’ve made events within it, and I would say these are kind of critical moments, or moments of crises of where you said something was not working; I need to do this, I need to do that, I’m going to insert this, and I’m going to go back to Borges, I’m going to do this… Alright? Those are kind of control devices, it seems to me, they bring you back to a certain place. Is that true? Are there control devices? What are those moments where 113

you make a decision to shift, to change, to do something else, what is critically defined in that?

THE STUDENT THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

THE IMPATIENT THE STUDENT

[pauses to think again] Other than the fact that it just changes a chapter.

Critically defined in that...

Okay, you said you went back to the Library.

Yes Why didn’t you go to another story?

I don’t know.. I think that the content was something that intrigued me, the contrast of the mathematical accuracy still possessing a “flaw.”

Do you think of this as an architectural process of curiosity?

Yes. I think there’s a lot of curiosity. The architectural part, I think…

So, I’ve been — in talking with friends, I like to say, for me at least, I say that there’s a difference between something ‘architectural’, and something that is ‘architecture’, and I think that a lot of this is architectural, but I don’t think it’s quite yet architecture.

Do you mean ‘building’?

I mean, I think there are things that imply space, but not much of it is distinctly spatial. I think towards the end this starts to become something that is more readable as an architecture, but as far as the cyanotypes are concerned, that’s… [trails off indistinctly]

THE INQUISITVE PRACTITIONER

You kind of told the story in a very linear way, “I did this, then this, and then I got to this.” So, that kind of suggests that there’s a beginning, and it’s— I don’t wanna say linear — a nonlinear, linear… This is obviously a very nonlinear process, but I wonder.. I’m surprised, actually, that you ended on trying to make a “building,” or maybe that’s not the end. So, I guess I’m wondering with all of this work here do you see this having culminated in this, or do you kind of view it all as…

THE STUDENT

THE INQUISITIVE PRACTITIONER THE STUDENT THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

THE PRAISING CRITIC

I don’t see this as a culmination of it, I think that this is just the next logical step after having made the device.

And then this could keep looping and looping…

And become something more.

There are a couple of propositions that you have that I find to be quite intriguing. The first is, I think maybe inadvertently, you were performing a critique of the thesis itself as an educational device. We see a lot of inflicted and superimposed, possibly sometimes forced methodology on the students, or from the students. We want to know the linearity, we want to start with concept, and we want it to evolve into something that — I’m not gonna use the word architecture, or building, because those are scary words for me. So, I think that maybe by accident, maybe not, I think that there is a critique of thesis, which I’m kind of intrigued in. I initially was kind of disappointed when I heard you say I’m gonna make a building, as opposed to an architecture, but – then I realized there is another proposition, I’m projecting onto this, but it has to do with my question about: If once a librarian breaks through and becomes a caretaker, are they granted access to the building? What I enjoy about that potential question is: Does a piece of architecture — maybe it’s a building — does it require occupancy? Or does it require continual occupancy, in order to be a spatial construct and a condition of architecture? I find there’s something poetic, romantic, highly disturbing (I don’t really discern between those terms) about a building that was once occupied, but that can no longer be occupied. And then I think you potentially start offering a critique of what program means. If it functions as a Library, it kind of demands that there is a user, and once it’s sealed off is it still a Library? So there’s kind of the bigger question about architecture and program and thesis, somewhere.. I’m still trying to string a coherent thought together, but those are the two propositions that I see kind of projecting, at least that’s my read of it initially.

My hair caught on fire on about minute three, and I mean that in a good way cause your brain is just going so fast that your hair goes phoof! [laughter ripples through the audience]

THE PRAISING CRITIC

On one hand, you could be taken to task for being self-indulgent for a number of months, I’d like to applaud you instead for being incredibly 115

brave. I mean, It’s very hard to get students to step away from something they haven’t seen before, and to take risks, and that’s what your thesis has been about. That said, and ultimately, as radical as this may sound, it’s really not. Your process is really not that radical, the surrealists did it. You know? They found that moments of inspiration and the space of creativity occurs when two things, seemingly disparate things, come in contact with each other, rub up against each other, or when mistakes occur; and I thought it was remarkable how many times in this process you defined a place where… “my hard drive blew up,” you know, “I tried to unfold this thing and it didn’t unfold the way I wanted,” you know, “the ink appeared on the paper in a different way.” Those were moments where the space for creativity and imagination opened up, and you were able to rush in and fill it. The fact that you were willing to rush in and fill it I think is incredibly laudatory. I have never seen on the walls or on the floor a map of someone’s brain before. [audience chuckles] THE PRAISING CRITIC

And I think that’s ultimately what we’re seeing, I mean I kind of keep looking at this, this is a map of your imagination. Which makes it incredibly hard to critique, right? But again, I want to kind of applaud the— I’m gonna be vulgar: you’ve got a lot of balls! [the crowd gathered erupts in laughter and applause]

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

Are you from Texas? [more laughter]

THE STUDENT

I think that early on I started becoming aware that the critique of what I was doing was that it was very self-indulgent, that it was just kind of at the whim of what I was interested in. You heard when I was explaining this drawing, I started talking about the layers in relation to context, and I think that I acknowledged that this drawing was so far removed from how I had traditionally thought of architecture, I was trying to search for a way that it could relate back to what the conversations of architecture are about. So, it was like “Okay, well what happens over time, you have a history where people do things, what’s happening in Tampa, they’ve built a lot of ugly buildings, well what do we do now?”

So, I feel like in a stretch that’s how I was trying to relate the thought processes of what I was doing, at least, into something that was not just about my own process.

THE INQUISITIVE PRACTITIONER

I think, there’s something really nice about working with the impurity of creativity, and not trying to make it about dividing things into known commodities. Being able to work with the unknown, and not knowing, and taking these accidents and folding them back into your process.

We had talked before about the self-indulgent issue, but I think that you’ve really taken this to a level beyond that, in some sense, because of the rigor with which you’ve pursued it; and, also going back into the “real world,” we live in a world where you’re constantly getting monkey-wrenches and constraints and things thrown into your ideas, so in an abstract way you’ve kind of gone through this process and folded all those into your story, your narrative. Also, different media, is really interesting, and the way that they play off of each other, and the machines, and that they function. You know? That they’re not just objects, I think is really interesting. I think a lot of what you’re doing is playing with the transposition of these different techniques.

THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

Mhm. There’s something that’s quite nice about your lack of media specificity. I see a lot of students that are driven by the media, and it certainly informs, sometimes it dictates. I think you’ve, much like your narrative, which even the way you’ve pinned up on the wall, it’s not completely linear, it kind of just weaved through and around, and sometimes supports, sometimes collapses, and sometimes ignores the media, which I think is kind of an interesting thing. I want to get back to the machines for a second, I mean, honestly I think that is as much of a condition of architecture as any building that I’ll see while I’m here, which is not a critique of buildings representing architecture, but it’s a spatial, kind of perceptual, time-based, phenomenological, ritualistic kind of event that’s all kind of wrapped up, and I think we talked about this months ago, and I still — at some point I would like to still have a conversation with you about the critique of… There’s a conversation that’s somewhere between building and architecture that deals with occupancy, and it deals with structure, and it deals with program, and what I find again really poetic — I found it initially disturbing, but I find that more seductive — is that a building postprogram and post-occupancy, what is the conversation that can be had after that? I think you might be kind of knocking on the door with this idea of caretakers, of the architecture of the idea of, of the notion of, Library; the idea of architecture as opposed to the building itself, and it’s a much longer conversation that I’m not ready to have yet…

THE STUDENT

As I was going about this, there’s a variety of programs that I came up with, and one of them was The Institute of Discarded Thoughts, and I think that fits in as a caretaker for things that are no longer needed..

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THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

Or maybe that are no longer used, but are still needed. There’s a subtle difference there.

Do you consider these artifacts of discarded thoughts?

I think there are discarded thoughts amongst them, others are ones that are still being pursued.

How do you make that decision?

I think in me saying this now, it was just the ones that I’m still working on that I want to do more with. The others are ones that maybe I’ll come back to at some point. I mean.. The animations for one, I think they ruined me enjoying drawing for a moment, because it got to a point where I wasn’t taking my time and enjoying what I was doing, it was just “I gotta do thirty frames per second to get a second of animation, and it’s just Go Go Go!” So, I think that’s something that could fall under discarded.

It’s very interesting that you keep pointing to that inanimate stack of paper, and you refer to it as an animation. There’s something about that disconnect, about architecture, occupancy, animation, there’s a removal that again I’m highly disturbed and intrigued by at the same time.

Do you consider this thing a tool?

This? [pointing to red device]

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC THE STUDENT

Yes Yes. How? It mediated between the light and the objects, so — A wrench mediates between the bolt, or nut, and your hand, so this was in a way a tool.

Mhm. How is that different than a device as which you called them?

Chris: True. I don’t know.. I don’t think my understanding of the

specificity of the words is enough to answer.

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

Because it’s restructuring something else, it’s taking light and trying to make it a kind of projector. It’s a device for projecting light upon things on different levels, not unlike what many artists try to do in terms of representation. Alright? And so, the idea of mapping, the notion of light, the idea of time, kind of manifest in this, but I don’t know if it’s an architecture. I wonder though, if it holds certain sets of information about architecture, and quite obviously I think it does. [pauses for a moment to organize a thought] I don’t know, I think you tend to really become alive when you’re talking about the stories you read. Okay, and how you’ve used that to structure some kind of fictional landscape, a fictional architecture.

Okay, so I’m going to stay in the realm of fiction, because maybe that’s what your architecture is, maybe it’s a story; and one of the most, I think, interesting moments, currently, in terms of reading books on architecture, is Alberto Perez Gomez’ book Built Upon Love, and in the introduction he has an acknowledgment, and he says thank you very much to so-and-so for forcing me to write a book on architecture with no images. Okay, and I just think that’s an extraordinary thought.

The question becomes though: does this start to inform a book about architecture with no images? So, can any of these artifacts start to inform that story? That’s why I was kind of looking at the idea of control devices, where things kind of shift the story into something else, and then how they connect. Which takes me to this relationship with ink on mylar, this kind of liminal condition, which is then an infinite, yet very, very defined space. Alright, and so, I’m wondering how you unfold that, and how you structure that, and it seems to me that you’re constructing an archive. Right? And so, if it’s an architecture, to me, I don’t know if I want to give it a special name, you know, of discarded thoughts, or this or that.

THE STUDENT THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

That’s why I— You know it’s okay, you know, that is, it’s part of the imagination, you want it to archive particular things, and maybe though it’s not that it’s called that, but that’s what it does, and you have to figure out how it embodies that. Alright, so maybe an archive is an interesting thing.

You know, to collect,and then to see: okay what do I use? What do I not use? How do they start to connect? And then, how do I order them? How do they start to work spatially? And so, I’m not sure what 119

that is architecturally, but it is architecture. Right? And I’m not sure if you write that, or if it becomes something you should start to define three-dimensionally, spatially, and concretely.

THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

And it’s interesting, I know I have several times, and you referred to that [pointing to graphics of building] as the architecture, I just.. As a critique of an architectural education, if we wanna pull it back that far, I’m wondering if this– [gestures broadly to the entire pin-up] –is the architecture, this is the archive, and this is the way that we experience process, and sort of understand it as kind of as a device itself, that it’s not about the singularity. And I think the other thing, I see this with student’s a lot, they will do a thesis and they will come to a conclusion. Their thesis can be about a critique, it can be about an analysis, it can be about the generation of an idea, a lot of students that I have seen over the years will come to a conclusion with their thesis, and they’ll park it, and they will go into practice, and it will stay parked. I have a feeling for you, this is about, not a conclusion, it’s about the — it’s about sealing off one chamber and opening up a different chamber. I have a feeling that this kind of idea, which I think could be maybe the word that segregates building from architecture, if you wanna go there, this idea is gonna serve you for possibly decades, at some point you’re probably gonna come back and filter and say it was total bullshit, which is the mark that you’re kind of growing and being very analytical, which is why originally I said I think this is kind of a critique, or an analysis, of thesis, not of particularly a thesis, but the condition of architectural education itself. It’s an interesting counter to some of the other projects that we’ve seen, and architecture is kind of this big animal, and I think if you take any of the components away it stops functioning as an entirety. So, I’m glad to see, highly critical of, but glad to see this kind of — this investigation where this — the archive is the thing, versus an ‘arrival at’ in the last panel of something that resembles — it’s got stairs, a ramp, and a door, and therefore it is architecture, and we all sort of agree and leave.

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

Let me make a quick comparison between two architects. John Hejduk, alright, constructed a series of narrative conditions and they were embodied by a formal language. Alright? That were also kind of a

poetic imagination, but it was very much about how they kind of collectively worked together and how they defined space, and became an architecture of sorts. The architect Walter Pichler does a similar kind of thing in constructing artifacts, taking the artifacts of his life, actually, and then making places for those to exist within a very particular landscape. The interesting thing about Pichler is that the architecture is bound within a particular kind of vernacular, and that way it’s made comes from a sense of place, of which he has a cultural heritage. However, the artifacts that are held are completely different. So, really it’s this interesting — it’s kind of this defined space of how we house these things, and to house something I think is okay.

To say that it exists in a certain space is okay — and I think that is a challenge. Not to say that you have to, but I would challenge you to start to think about that. How to find, perhaps in a context in order to exist and hold these artifacts. Because these artifacts construct a way to understand space to a degree, right? How they’re held, what they are, their dimension, their character, and the way they’re drawn. That would be a challenge in terms of how you start to collect these things, you’re a collector. You know, this is what Borges does, and this is what Calvino does, I mean they’re constructing an archive.

THE STUDENT

LE CONSEILLER

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

I think that, maybe it’s not realizing the full potential of that idea, but from the first time I talked with Nancy a year ago before starting thesis I told her that I wanted the document itself to become something that was a significant part of the work. So, the archive, that is this book that is made, so it’s designing this book in response to making all these different things. But I think that maybe could just be a springboard for understanding it a bit more.

I want to add something back here, and I don’t often do that since the conversation’s so great, but— I’m partially culpable for the piece on the wall that is the building in the landscape. Of course I can imagine that painters are probably terrified of the word ‘painting,’ and architects are terrified of the word ‘building.’ But, I’m really grateful for paintings, and I’m really grateful for buildings too. Particularly buildings that are made by ideas more than any other thing. So I don’t know, I guess I just — I was interested in this vast breadth of an archive of there being this moment where we could say “a building in a landscape” where we could in a way see what settled, right? You could call it enclosure, or inhabitation — Well to me it’s kind of an interior world, of the imagination.

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LE CONSEILLER

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

THE STUDENT

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

THE STUDENT THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

Yeah, yeah. So to me, it doesn’t concern me at all that there’s one manifestation of this piece that’s a building, and even if there were more, to come, and even, it wouldn’t bother me either if you developed the building. I mean, that wouldn’t trouble me at all, in the slightest.

If you started to design a building that was a maker of cyanotype drawings, I would be grateful for something like that to exist in the world.

You know, what he’s done though, he’s given personality to each one of these things, because its part of the story. It has this kind of, for better or worse, kind of this animated life. You know, something animated is a whole different thing, it might not just be flipping through pages, right? And so how to animate? And to me, architecture is animation. It’s giving form to a particular set of ideas that you move through. It is animation. Moving through space, it’s animated. So, these things have their distinct personalities that you can invest this fictional content into in order to construct an architecture, and what that turns out to be is really the dialogue of that story, the dialogue of these pieces that you have. I thinks it’s only, I know this is cliché, but it’s a beginning to make an architecture. And I think it would be quite interesting, not to conclude with that, but to kind of find out where it goes, in a material sense.

I had a lot of fun working through trying to coalesce all those different things into an architecture, and I think that there’s a lot in the archive that is not yet being addressed in this at all, but I think that would be something that would be fun to do.

Do you think that in terms of liminality, in terms of — When you make a cyanotype you are fixing something based on process, it fixes it to a surface. So you can say in effect that the distance between the image and the actual surface of the paper itself is the liminal construct, it’s the very thing that holds both sides, and gives form to the piece itself.

So this is what kind of you’re saying with this relationship between the line and the paper, and once you start to unfold that it will start to construct an idea of space, and fixing something in space is very interesting. To stop something in motion. You know, and I encourage you to read the Paradoxes of Zeno in that matter.

Paradoxes of Zeno?

Yeah, because it’s an interesting set of conditions that starts to talk about movement in space, and the very fact that the theory itself

prevents me from getting to where I’m going. To a certain point, things kind of really slow down. And so it’s all about liminality.

THE REVERED DIRECTOR

You know I think the interesting thing about standing in front of ten or twelve people, who know you to different degrees, is that you get ten or twelve different readings of this body of work. And you know, I’m sitting here thinking, the Chris Weaver story is a very complex story, and when I look at the body of work I think a little bit about knowing you for several years, and just as you move in and out of different ways of working here, you kind of moved in and out of architecture for a while, which made some of us very nervous, right? So, we reeled you back in, and probably Jody had as much to do with it as anyone, bringing you back into architecture. What I like about this body of work is — I used to accuse you of not being a closer, I’d get really pissed when you didn’t finish a project, like Nancy’s Core 3 project, I was just dying that you didn’t finish that model, right? And I think I was wrong, I think you are the closer, I think sometimes you kind of had already finished it in your mind, you knew it, and you could easily walk away from it, and you were on to the next thing. What’s interesting about this is that it’s one project, and it’s about seventeen projects, and I think at certain moments you kind of drop the mic and walk away from something, and start something else, but you’re kind of dragging the cord with you, so there’s continuity between it. I think the beauty of this is the continuity. Even if it’s a continuity that has big jumps, there’s always a kind of way to stitch A to B and B to C and C to D, yet it’s not linear, it’s a constellation. You kind of bounce around in this constellation manner, which I think is really important, I think if you’re ticking boxes in our discipline you’re in trouble. And so, the constellation, in terms of the kind of intellectual construct that allows you to move around and make short jumps, and then huge jumps, is I think really healthy. I’ve heard you talk about it a couple times now, and I have to say you talk about it with enormous confidence, but more than anything you’re just enthusiastic about talking about it. You kind of want to talk about it because I think, even though you know what you’re saying, at certain moments you’re almost figuring it out while you’re talking about it. I don’t mean like you don’t know what you’re saying, but I can tell it’s a confirmation of certain thoughts you’ve had when you say it out loud in public. And I’m just thrilled that a project like this can exist in an institution side by side with what we see here and downstairs, and so, and I think that’s the point. It’s not a one size fits all education.

THE ALLEGORIC CRITIC

I think that that’s very interesting, because you know there’s— It’s 123

unique but it’s also part of the language of this school, and we see it here and there, I can go through studios and find remnants of certain processes. I think that the difference is, and oftentimes when someone presents their work they stand outside the work and talk at the work.

Alright, and for some reason, you’re inside the work kind of talking back to us. Alright, so you really start to go inside it — I think that that’s a caution, in a way, maybe, it could be dangerous that you don’t emerge out of that.. And then on the other hand, how you look at it critically is important, how you take all this stuff and turn it into— look at it very critically, and analyze it, and pick and choose, because you are going to have to do that when you make a book.

THE INQUISITIVE PRACTITIONER

THE STUDENT THE ESOTERIC CRITIC

THE STUDENT THE ESOTERIC CRITIC THE IMPATIENT THE STUDENT THE IMPATIENT THE STUDENT THE IMPATIENT

Diagram your jury. The actuality of the jury, overlay it with the idea of the jury.

Yes, that will come I’m thinking somewhere there’s an operable Library of Erasure project that has to happen, so it’s doing it, or it’s un-doing it, but it’s recording it, and it’s keeping it, and it’s synthesizing that.

Yeah, there’s something there.

Bryan: Yeah It’s great. Why the particular choice of language for the last pieces? [stalls at The Impatient’s stymieing question] Very particular Yeah.

Russian Constructivists, Bernard Tschumi

THE STUDENT

I think that I need to get more images shown to you of this piece, because when you get into the small workings of this, it’s not the same as the rest of that, and part of why that gets further — if you notice it as the images progress it started out right up close and then it gets further and further and then it’s just gone, is because it felt like it was becoming Constructivist too quick.

THE IMPATIENT

It became that quick, but you know, there are so many other potential

languages here that could create a different thing. Maybe— I mean the whole process is about negating meaning with some reason behind, and then you make too fast and end up with some other kind of meaning.

THE STUDENT THE IMPATIENT

Um..

It’s good. [applause]

END SCENE

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ENECS DNE

NOTES

1 On the nature of things: In The Poetics of the Island of Vessels, Neil Spiller (2013) explains his interpretation of Literature Professor Anthony Adam’s explanation: “‘things’ are much more complex: Things are not objects – not fixed in place, not docile for the purposes of study, the thing is the object in chaotic blur, or in pieces, with a certain agency of its own that encourages creativity … We cannot study things directly, we can only catch glimpses, they remain partial, oblique, peripheral. Once we look we render them objects.” This explanation offered an intriguing way to look at drawings and their potential to explore conditions that cannot be directly observed.

2 In 1924 André Breton (1972) wrote the First Surrealist Manifesto, outlining a protocol for action, a methodology of working that allows for the development of an internal climate conducive to creativity.

Furthermore, Breton emphasizes this as a methodology for living, allowing the process to transcend the production of material forms and permeate daily activity, seeking a full revolution in the reader’s system of thought. Proposing automatistic devices as an effort to silence the conscious in the hopes of letting the subconscious slip through and take control. This process is essential to the methods of working employed in the project contained in these pages, the creative links made across the year are intricately woven into a method of working that sought to keep with the spirit of surrealist automatism, from the scale of individual lines to the selection of program inspirations, critical decisions were reached through working in ways that kept the conscious mind at bay (hence the difficulty in presenting the reasoning behind certain decisions).

Hermeneutics as presented by Hans-Georg Gadamer (1966) set forth a new subject-object relationship in which the subject plays an active role (via interpretation) in the development of the intrinsic nature and cultural understanding of the object. This dissolution of the barrier between subject and object merges well with a surrealist interpretation of the world, allowing for interpretative evolutions of creative content through techniques such as collage, appropriation, and an internal feedback loop.

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3 Bryan Cantley (2013) suggests an iterative process of drawing a drawing of a drawing of a drawing as a means to document the unknowable thing. An observational-understanding sifted off the top of the thing going through change.

4 Krauss, Rosalind. “Notes on the Index.” The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985): 195-219.

5 See Deleuze & Guattari (1988) for discussion on the role of “patchwork” and its relation to smooth and striated space.

6 Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism [in English]. Ann Arbor Paperbacks. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972).

7 Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler [in English].

Translated by William Weaver. Everyman’s Library. (New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1993).

8 Tschumi, Bernard. The Manhattan Transcripts [in English]. 2nd ed. ed. (London: Academy Editions, 1994).

9 On names, labels, and things: “...The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes.’’

“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.

“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged, Aged Man.’ “ “Then I ought to have said, ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.

“No, you oughtn’t; that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways and Means’; but that’s only what it’s called, you know!”

“Well, what is the song, then?” said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.11 10 See discussion on “uselessness” in architecture in Robert McCarter (1987) 11 Carrol, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & through the Looking Glass. (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1946).

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EPILOGUE

For clarification, this was not a thesis. This was a project. This project had no thesis. It placed no proposition, rather it was filled with suppositions. There was no statement set forth to be proved, rather it sought to discover. It began with an emphasis on questions of doubt and uncertainty, and as this year comes to a close, the questions still run in abundance. For years I struggled in expectation of this phase of the education, I felt no certainty over what I would investigate. I have watched respected colleagues set forth with utter certainty down clearly defined paths, and I felt a sense of unease both at their clarity and my lack thereof. Yet, perhaps clarity is of negligible importance at the onset of a project. As it evolves, it must develop some sibling condition to clarity, some way of knowing, of understanding, even if that understanding is an understanding of a condition of non-understanding. So, this begs the question: what were the ways of knowing that came out of this project? How were things made understandable, and what was the nature of that which was understood? And once again, here we are, with more questions.

The answers I feel are long coming, yet it doesn’t hurt to suggest some thoughts here for any of those that may happen to read this far and remain curious. Perhaps this project was an attempt at finding a methodology, or even more importantly, an attempt at discovering a methodology that can be used to develop methodology. A generative device of generative devices. The ways of knowing contained within such an intellectual construct could be many, yet I will attempt to smudge away the hazy outlines and lay out a few here. Media carries truth and lies. Observation of the way content shifts through modes of representation can allow for one to glean the subtle gradient between seemingly similar conditions. Tools, Implements, Machines, and Devices all shape the way things come to be, and as such it is necessary to be conscious of the lines they draw, and their distinction from the lines you draw. The same can be said of the educational device. In spite of the academic fear of conversations around intuition, the end goal of schooling is to ingrain an intuition. Essentially, it’s design method brainwashing. Be aware of what you’re being taught, and how it relates to the way you see things, and to what you were taught the previous semester and the next. Take it all in, understand it, and make it your own. In ways this project was endlessly an attempt at refuting the methodology that felt natural. It sought to understand 131

these embedded ways of working through the act of challenging them, in the hopes that by trying to break a mold I would somehow come to understand the make-up of the mold. Still not entirely sure if this logic was valid, or if that’s even an accurate descriptor of what was done, however there is an interesting space created by the friction between a mold and its product. Yet, I full-heartedly believe that resistance for rebellion’s sake is blinding, if you want to learn, you must first open up and accept what others are teaching. Friction can only be made between a mold and its product if the product has allowed itself to fill out the confines of the mold. Now, to offer a critique of the work presented. In hindsight, it makes no sense to me why I didn’t begin paying around with media shifts earlier on. That alone was singlehandedly the most effective way to evolve/generate content.

The early work focused on drawing, and if a series of processes had been continued in parallel, the drawings could have been explored more thoroughly through other media along the way instead of after they had reached substantial completion. Furthermore, at the return to the building, there was a disconnect between the space suggested in the media explorations, and the space delineated by the building. The architectural conditions outlined by the cyanotypes and their devices suggest more intriguing ways of holding space than that which was designed in the end. These elements suggested something ephemeral, clearly defined, yet amorphous, contradictorily indistinct, yet exact to such an extent that it is invigorating. Evolutions of an architecture of this are brewing. Now it is time to return the tracing to the map. 1 There are a lot of loose-ends here, tangents that shot off yet were never tracked down. The task ahead becomes clarifying this network and the threads that it pulls on, while continuing to foster its growth into something other.

Notes 1 Deleuze & Guattari (1988)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Blur Epiporos Fragment Seed Material Aporia Hard Drive Unnamed Drawing Sketchbook Scans Light Boxes Wall Sketch Stamp Tool Epiporos Fragment Epiporos Sketchbook Scans Raw Meat Render Raw Meat Last Minute Caffeinated Drawings Pataphor Animation When Lines Meet Wall-space Model Wall-space Construct The First Device The Device Arranged Projection-Space Conception of a Thought The Composites Paper Doodles Prociere Library (In)vert Mirror-Lens System The Second Device Locating the Building in the Landscape Digital Meditations on the Building Shadow Construct Scales of Occupation The Cyanotype Surfaces Surface 1 Surface 2 Surface 3

2 4 6 7 8 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 55 56 58 60 62 64 67 68 70 72

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Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Surface 4 Surface 5 Surface 6 Unfoldied Surfaces Finding the Building Building Print 1 Building Print 2 Building Print 3 Making the Landscape Adding the Rotation Track The Building Animated The Building Animated (again) The Building Animated (still more) The Building Animated (that’s a lot) really?

Animated into the Landscape Motion of the Device See Top of Page for Image Title

74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 100 102 104 106 108

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