Portfolio Year 2 (Part 1) by Connor Gravelle

CONNOR GRAVELLE

“Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture… and the fear of war.” — Viktor Shlovsky This is a photo of one building, many thousands of times. In the blurred perception of the camera’s lens, we find this coincidental space to be the antithesis of complacency. In so many regular objects, the inherently innate possibility of a perceptually unfamiliar misstep presents itself. Presumptions are upturned, and a reading anew is posited which overtly questions the numbed senses we use to explicate our experiences in a pervasively cluttered reality.

WORKS 2012-2014

About Me

About the Cover

Hello! My name is Connor Gravelle, and I am currently a candidate for an undergraduate degree at SCI-Arc.

Throughout the year, the idea of a blur, in more ways than literal, has come to fascinate me. Both its spatial ambiguity as a physical transformation of form or image and its more abstract potentials as a representational tool have become key contingents in the work done.

This is my portfolio. Between its covers, you will find an amassing of what I think about as per my work in visual, architectural, designed and documented forms. Its organization has been curated to follow a genealogical order, which is described in further detail on the next page. I have a particular interest in resolving new ideas about the perspectives which are cast on architecture. Both the development of the field towards its current form in historical retrospective and the possibility of future tangents into new paradigms for our built world as a whole fascinate me. I believe that architecture holds the keen possibility to influence us, as the human race, on a profound level. It is perhaps the art which encapsulates us the most within its grasps, and, in those regards, its powers should be appropriated in order to further our understanding of the human condition as manifested in our designed reality. Contact Information Address (LA)

411 South Main Street Unit 318 Los Angeles, California 90013 United States of America

Address (MA)

5 Milk Street Newburyport, Massachusetts 01950 United States of America

Phone

+1 978 918 2575

Email connor_gravelle@sciarc.edu connor.gravelle@me.com (personal)

In a sense of perception and anticipation, the blur challenges the human abilities to engage perceptually space or graphic to productive ends where typical complacencies we hold about the world around us might be underwritten so that, having realized the content before us which stands precedent to its blurred abstraction, we return to former understandings with more nuanced perceptions and higher detailed instantiations of the existences we hold. This performs as a catalyst in promising an estrangement from our presumptive complacencies. Academics ―― 4.0 GPA at SCI-Arc (as of currently available grades) ―― Instruction in the German language at Goethe Institut Boston (2008-2011) ―― 4.1 Graduating GPA from Newburyport Public High School in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 2012 Awards and Recognitions ―― Specially selected to represent SCI-Arc to prospective students on both tours and students panels ―― Chosen to display work at SCI-Arc’s annual Spring Show of student work for both 2013 and 2014 ―― 2012 winner of Scholastic Art Award in the Architecture category as well as subsequent Prismacolor Scholarship for design of “Mexican Border Memorial”

Contents Organizational Aims �� 4 Observations on Reality in Melancholia ��126 Scansion �� 216 FORMAL OBJECTS

6 The Failure of the Contemporary Gallery ��127 A Discourse with Los Angeles �� 217

SCI-Fa �� 8 Synopsis �� 8 Thoughts on Program �� 8 Thoughts on Institution �� 8 The Fourth Wall as Societal Device �� 14 The Fourth Wall in Architecture �� 14 F***, the Spline �� 17 A Mechanized Pool for Fashion �� 21 Los Angeles, or Epileptic Shock �� 21 Escape is Futile: LA Live™ �� 27 Beginnings and Ends in Architecture �� 27 [We] are LA �� 32 Canonical Images in Fashion and Architecture �� 32 Pertaining Quotes �� 32 Skin �� 32

An Abstracted Botticelli ��128 Sourcebook ��218 Manifestations of Japanese Style in LA ��130 On “Lysistrata Unbound” ��220 “Progress”, or the Misguided Radicalism ��133 Poorly Exposed I ��222 Loos and Wright: Early Modernisms ��135 Poorly Exposed II �� 224 On the Encyclopedia �� 224 Rationalism and Authority in Architecture �� 137 On Its Shortcomings �� 224 In the Alienated Bikini Zone ��138 A Brief Genealogy of Estrangement ��232 In the Bikini Zone… ��138 Upon an Alien’s Eyes… ��138 Nouvel vs. Jerusalem ��236

In the Bastardized Perspective �� 142 The Linear Perspective �� 142 Figure �� 44 Inequalities �� 142 Irregularities ��143 Documenting a Primitive �� 48 Opportunities ��145 Transforming the Primitive �� 52 Warning of Nuclear Waste Sites ��146 Broken Ground ��146 Abstracting the Transformation �� 58 On Us on Ground ��146 A Lofted Surface �� 63 RELATIONAL FIELDS

150

One more Abstraction �� 65 Hollywood Boys’ and Girls’ Club �� 152 A Boys’ and Girls’ Club �� 152 FORMAL FIELDS 66 Blurs �� 152 Thoughts on Site �� 152 Field �� 68 Archeology, or Performance �� 152 Narcissus ��158 LACA �� 72 Everything and Nothing ��158 Architecture as Orchestration ��159 Sergei �� 90 Floorslabs as Worlds Divided ��159 Moiré ��159 RELATIONAL OBJECTS 96 Architecture Parlante: Significations ��162 Movements ��162 A Home for One �� 98 The Balcony, Stage ��162 On the Abstraction of Architectural Icons ��100 Los Angeles: A Transient Urbanism ��162 On Our Relationship to the Home ��100 Voyeurism à la Shining ��166 On the Abstraction of Architectural Icons ��100 What It Might Mean to be a Ruin ��166 On Our Relationship to the Home ��106 The Glitch, an Estrangement ��169 On the Home’s Foibles ��106 Phenomenological Optics at Play ��169 On Image Abstraction ��106 End (A Quoted Piece) �� 172 Eleven Years of Transiency ��118 Formal Analyses of Chandigarh ��182 The Future City ��119 Formal Analyses of Miralles’ Mercat Santa Caterina ��188 Diagram and Disaster: Flight 901 ��120 Ornamentism ��196 Complacencies and Estrangements in the Works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and Adam Ferriss ��120 Experience and Complacency ��212 On Air New Zealand Flight 901 ��121 On Space and Our Agency �� 214

Organizational Aims It seems somewhat ineffective when attempting to preordain the organization of this catalogue of my works to default to chronological order. Equally, it strikes me as not ideal to simply compose the sequence on its own terms without larger thought to the forces subconsciously at hand. So, I developed a system to catalogue and index each project within this portfolio against a larger categorical classification. This organizational scheme can be diagrammed as a radial grid which is overlaid onto a biaxial system. Each axis denotes two dichotomies: 1. Formal and Relational – denotes the difference between pieces of Architecture (or other works) which engage purely the terms of their field through an inward investigation of that field’s specific medium (Formal) and ones which attach to broader narratives, discussing topics outside the esoteric discipline of Architecture (Relational).

Each project comes annotated with a dashed in “space”, or the general areas of interest which it covers (overview diagram directly to right). Displayed here are the master charts of the studio projects’ “spaces” (left) and all projects (right). Each chapter annotates its own space in detail. Introspectively, this functioned on an entirely deeper platform which could allow me to retrospectively survey my progression. Serendipitous adjacencies and evolutionary trends are pervasive across the diagram, and a personal course can be charted to check my interests against those listed (also annotated in examples in grayed background text).

I hope personally that this organization is both able to index for me the progressions in the work and, at a broader scale, put the projects in dialogue with the events and pertinent subjects of Architecture and culture-making at once. I would venture to say that in this systematic post-rationaliza2. Object and Field – geometrically (or tion of the body of work that a cognizant more figuratively, in some cases) difself-exanimation on my part should be vital ferentiates the projects on a spectrum in determining the worthiness and derecfrom those which engage explicit tives which are being taken up. Objecthoods and those which attempt aggregation or accumulation in the In these ways, it would be the goal that logic of a Field. This becomes more this portfolio becomes something so much abstract when dealing with pieces more meaningful than a mere presentawhich are not geometrical (essays, tional tool to amass the seemingly hetimages et cetera), but still a indexierogeneous projects. It could act as both cal reading for or against aggregaa marker in my personal evolution within tory logic pertains, even if in a more the field and a dynamic organization of the conceptual manner. work, readily prepared for interpretation and observation alike. As if to construct Items closer to the edge of the radial a genealogy from this construed set of grid tend to take more credence towards projects, I would certainly hope that this precedents (Abstracting from them), while could guide sets forth a basic premisce by those more towards the center function on which all the works can enter a dialogue their own terms (Sovereign). with one another.

FORMAL

Abstractive Abstracted Primitives

Repetitions

1A Primitive Works Warped Grids

LACA

Aggregations

Boxes Modules

Primitive Geometries

Sovereign Allegorical Algorithms

Figures Parametricism

Blobs

Messy Materials

SCI-Fa

OBJECT

FIELD

Urbanism Biometric Obsessions

Awkwardness Objets Trouvés

Ornament

Humanist Perspectives

Posthumanist Encounters Glitches and Blurs

Precedent Analyses

Narratives

RELATIONAL

A Home for One Abstracted Precedents

Boys' and Girls' Club

Postmodern Appropriations

FORMAL

Abstractive

1A Primitive Works Sergei

LACA Figure

Sovereign

Field

SCI-Fa

FIELD

OBJECT

In the Bikini Zone Image Abstractions

Ornamentism

Manifestations of Japanese Style in LA

Warning of Nuclear Waste Sites Comprehension and Abstraction in the Bastardized Perspective

Space and Agency

Upon an Alien's Eyes

A Home for One Abstracted Botticelli Paintings Poorly Exposed 1

A Brief Genealogy of Estrangement

Misguided Radicalities

Rationalism and Author in Architecture

Boys' and Girls' Club Eleven Years of Transiency

Scansion

Poorly Exposed 2 Extrangement and Complacency l’Institut du Monde Arabe vs Dome of the Rock

The Failure of the Contemporary Gallery

Review of Grand Park Review of “Lysistrata Unbound”

Chandigarh Analyses Sourcebook

Diagram on Disaster and Narrative: Flight 901

Loos and Wright: Early Modernisms

Observations on Reality in Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia

Mercat Santa Caterina Analyses

The Future City

RELATIONAL

FORMAL OBJECTS

FORMAL

Abstracted Primitives

1A Primitive Works Boxes Primitive Geometries

Figure Figures

Blobs

Messy Materials

SCI-Fa

OBJECT

SCI-Fa Studio, Heather Flood, Spring 2014 What becomes ironic about such institutions, generally speaking, seems to be SCI-Fa (The Southern California Institute of their often reclusive nature, as if to boast Fashion) is an exploration in programmatic solely within granted circles their accomand formal ambiguity of space. This formal plishments of material and craft. Why production applies a logic of transformashouldn’t such a factory be in your face? tional conics in order to eschew primiWhat withholds an institution like SCI-Fa tive geometries to the ends of producing to the state of secondary or tertiary status simultaneities of program and formal in a vibrancy to the likes of Downtown Los rarifications of space which suppose an Angeles? entirely unconventional architecture both outwardly experiential and esoteric to the Thus, the institution’s interactions with medium of Architecture. the public sphere, both theatrical and revealing in nature, are of the utmost Of specific importance to the project are importance for demonstrative value in its its representational qualities, especially in architecture. Its architecture should read: relation to the formal agendas at hand. Re- this is not a place of observation, rather garding the bent form of the building, the a directly confrontational experiment of conventions of typical plans and sections empirical phenomenology. Melding perwere invalidated as meek in their explicafectly with the clear delineation of “middle tive possibilities for the inherently threespaces” (those medium-sized areas of dimensional nature in the spatial instaninterstitial importance, the organization of tiations of bending. This fundamentally the program outlined in the project’s brief shifted the project’s presentation to rely ought to engage and to stimulate the barboth on an animation and a series of peel- rier between the public and the institution ings or slicings (entitled “Scoop Drawings”) (the exo and the eso, that is to say) both of the building’s components (skin, massfrom outside-in and within-out. ing et cetera) as more adequate methods for the description of its assets in terms Also inherent to this observation is the formal, programmatic and representative. unique structure of power invested elsewhere in the provided spaces. Of noteworThoughts on Program thiness is the second largest allocation of area, divided between the building’s As briefed, SCI-Fa longs to be a sweatshop facilities and the institution’s administraof production value, stuffed mostly with tion. This combined mass is still to be compartments accessed indirectly from deemed more spatially important in the distant corners of a primarily mediumreading of the brief’s interpreted agendas space-filled building shrouded in privacy. than straightforward instruction, vested Clearly, sheer adherence to the provided half-heartedly in fleeting seminar rooms programmatic distributions will be inefand secluded studio plots. Thus, a hierarfectual in procuring unique intersections of chical relationship is established wherein space and constituencies. a metaphorically panoptic distribution of importance oversees the highly controlled Particularly of interest, given the diverse (and thus only secondarily conditioned) site and nearby orgy of demographics, spaces of traditional “education”. Again, it seems strange that an educational the powerhouse of production overtakes institution would allot spaces overwhelmthis positioning, as if to engage a muingly geared towards production, nearly tated beast, the purpose of which boraltogether forgoing more traditional roles ders between the refinements procured of education. It is clear that the prerogaby a disciplined body of pupils below an tive of the institution is not situated within overseeing administrative caste and the the momentary incidents of academia, let-wild machinery of production. but rather centered on the necessitated production of fashion materials and the How might this architecture, and in parlike. The facility is effectively established ticular its programmatic distributions and on the grounds of its own labor, the indispatial accordances, enable this loosely vidual meaningless and the collective but defined pedagogy to foster in a method a mere tool in this aesthetic machinery. conducive to the interaction between this

subculture and a larger context (Los Angeles, herself). In so doing, spaces otherwise perceived as afterthoughts or prerequisites might take prominence in facilitating such interactions. Id est, the institution’s shop or auditorium might be recast as crucial political arenas throughout which a diagrammatic goal of integration and discourse carries itself out, both captive and parasitic to the institutional framework which has spawned.

SCI-FA

Synopsis

Formal Objects

itself several perplexingly convoluted circumstances: Truly innovative approaches to the practices respective to these institutions are rendered temporarily null in their eras. Appreciation is acquired ex post facto as a kind of post-rationalization by the larger community. While the immediacy of the avant-garde does in fact leave beneficial scars on the functions of whichever

Thus, the institution’s interactions with the public sphere, both theatrical and revealing in nature, are of the utmost importance for demonstrative value in its architecture. discipline in question, it rarely becomes acknowledged by the greater society The strange thing about polemic intuuntil it is either extinct or festering on its itions, once realized in architecture as deathbed. What might occur if leading built things, seems to be their resistance thinkers in avant-garde practices were to towards syndication in their perspective engage society? Obviously, this cannot be environments. That is to say, it prevails enforced in any authoritarian manner onto that the integration of the institution is personal agendas, but, instead, archiperceived as counterintuitive to its core tecture may offer us a method by which radicalism, which, quite paradoxically, it to shift the performances both of such seeks to interject into a larger context. practices and prospective members of soThus, it is as if a cognitive membrane of cietal constituencies to the ends that their glass exists to separate an institution from brief scraping one another would produce its surroundings. Whatever the purpose of magnificent intersections. that institution might be, it might appear that this disconnection has severed critiThe actualized objectives of these institucally unexploited links which could foster tions suffer such significantly lengthened between those exo and those eso to these realizations within a culture that neither alternative definitions of otherwise comtheir creators nor their intended audiplacent notions so intrinsic to an avantences are able to partake in the spoils of garde practice. progression. Thus, Ikea is the effectual gravestone of a once beloved Bauhaus. The result of these tendencies manifests Beleaguered bachelors and strapped Thoughts on Institution

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Of specific importance to the project are its representational qualities, especially in relation to the formal agendas at hand. Regarding the bent form of the building, the conventions of plans and sections were invalidated as meek in their explicative possibilities for the inherently three-dimensional nature in the spatial instantiations of bending.

Formal Objects

SCI-Fa

Transformation Process

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

students alike were punished by history to endure a semicentury before innovative spatializations of Modernist design reached their grasps within reason. Of course among other circumstances, part of this is must be attributed to stagnant time and prolonged distancing between innovators and their audiences. Obviously, many factors contribute to this snail-paced progression, and few of these can be addressed by architecture. Still, the spatial division between those pushing forward the intensification of culture and their constituencies as manifest by architecture

Unfortunately, architecture to this point has to these ends remained rather unhelpful. Bauhaus became a household name only long after its dissipation, The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies evades the common New Yorker (a being so thirsty for unsettlement) to this day, and SCI-Arc remains unbeknownced even to those living beside it, to name a few situations inherent to the discipline of architecture. These circumstances must implode, rendering in their wake the complete disruption of previously held ideals about the agency and impotence of the avant-garde.

The Fourth Wall as Societal Device The Fourth Wall is a term pertaining to the theory of theater, constituting not in material but in perception the final enclosing “wall” of a stage set which metaphysically divides the performances occurring with the audience spectating. In more traditional roles, this division is not to be engaged. The theater-goers sit before their spectacle in complete compliance, idly engrossing themselves in only the representation of an event. This has come under considerable challenge in more contemporary works, whereby the wall itself is rendered variously null, enabling the fluid interaction between audience and

We might look at the Lockerbie bombing, in a brief detour, to illustrate this point. After the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over the small Scottish village, a media extravaganza presented the populace with a face-to-face depiction of tragedy. In regards to airline travel, the fourth wall, in its division of the passenger from the ramifications of both political wills related to the subject and the delicate structural systems of a Boeing 747 during flight, was utterly decimated. Surreal images of a ruined cockpit strewn about a bucolic field in the rural enclave, especially with the cause of the crash taken into consider-

Formal Objects

SCI-Fa

The wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 laying in a field in Lockerbie Scotland. Perhaps the most notorious graphic representation of the crash, it can be fathomed that the previous page’s former represtnation of the aircraft as object can never again be viewed with the comfort or certaintity which it previously held. The transformation of its form eschews our perceptions and more disturbingly than anything else reveals for us our spatial complacencies.

can be reduced not only to a negligible level but perhaps can even be promoted and appropriated.

Though largely untested, the results or perspective failure of such an action is far too great a possibility of which to continue a distasteful avoidance.

It seems that much of contemporary life, no less of that in a city, rests behind a fourth wall. Especially in regards to architecture, much is left behind our grasp, a mere representation of intentions and actions. Our persistence (and, thus, reliance) in the Fourth Wall is unequivocal to all else. We cling to its protection from the realities, effectively ammounting to a schism between our sensorial contact with the world itself sui generis and its ramifications towards our lives. Thus, it appears, much of the institutional and societal frameworks we have established seek to sustain this buffer between the rawness of contemporary existence and the comfort prerequesite to a sustainable life. We wretch in fear as these boundaries crumble in rare occasions. Take, for example, a crash of an airliner. We look to this object as a whole, a sort of container for people – passengers. Few engage this as a mechanized system, instead relying wholy on the perception of its geometric essence as one body. In the event of a crash, we are often times presented with a failure of the object to sustain the singular form we expect of it. We see its entrails spewn about as if to signify before us that our creation has failed. Once the skin of the beast is lifted from its framing, we find ourselves disgusted by the estrangement pronowned. An assembledge of heterogeneous parts, it repels our notions of truth and verity to see the actuality that is the machine, a loosly composed set of bolts and panels.

The Fourth Wall — Pan Am’s Clipper Maid of the Seas, the Boeing 747 later to take on the title Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York. On 21 December 1988, it would be bombed; much of the wreckage came to land on top of and around Lockerbie, Scotland. This caption has already irrevocably deconstructed your relationship with the Fourth Wall that encases airline travel. 270 lives were claimed by the calamity.

Both those within and outside institutions seem to be completely ignorant of each other’s existence or importance. While some have posted this as both an inherent elitism of the avant-garde and an ignorance of the masses, it is the distinct hypothesis that in at least some circumstances a purely architectural inefficiency may be of responsibility to the symptom. How might it be if these two groups were to be compressed within one atmosphere? Their entanglement, rendered as the dissolution of divisitory space could, in effect, render each obsolete by mutual ingestion. An enlightened citizenry could engulf the ostracized radicals just as these societal separatists might return to a world forever changed by their esoteric contemplations.

actor. Not always with consequence to the reiterated production before them, this at the purest state encapsulates a constituent engagement with results dramatic in their repurcisions for understanding and experience alike.

ation, irrevocably altered the relationship between the passenger and the machine. To see an image of the jetliner before the crash is to reengage the territorialized notions we had attained in the immediate foreground to the disaster. These are forever shattered by the presentation of images after the matter, and it may be said that we can never truly gaze onto the condition of the object before the event without irresistibly allowing our minds to venture onto the tragedy of which we have been informed by the reciprocal interchange of information they share. That, of course, was an example with rather morbid associations. Rather, the Fourth Wall might function in society in a strata of roles and circumstances. Critically speaking, its existence buffers the life of the individual from the myriad of complications presented by the outside world. The theatergoer, in this function, is in many instances in need of the division between the representational aspects of the performance and the perception occurring in his or her psyche. When this is removed, a new relationship is transfigured by the space between the stage and the seating. Obvious ramifications of grand importance rest in the presence or avoidance of this tactic within theatrical theory. In most other circumstances, the Fourth Wall’s persistence causes riffs in the understandings between constituencies of society. Specifically to a political end, these allot for much of the estrangement we face in a Postindustrial legacy. Our clothing, furniture, our buildings and any other manufactured good rest firmly behind a differentiation of metaphysical separation. Often, it seems, the dilution of this barrier results in consequences either disturbing or disruptional. The Fourth Wall in Architecture In the case of architecture, its function inherent as a container of program, constituencies and functions thereof bounds the capacity of most structures to the roles of uniform boxes. Even with formal experimentation, the Fourth Wall is hard broken even by the most radical of strategies. A cliché has thus formed around the solution to this problem, centered around a knee-jerk reaction of complete spatial implosion. It is rather inneffectual in many circumstances to demolish all walls. Instead, a myraid of other spatial strategies

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

Study Model Photos

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Especially in the case of a fashion school, it is integral that those inside experientially partake in the interactions of those outside, and that, conversely, those outside are changed fundamentally in their perspective by those within. Obviously, this cannot be predicted to the point that one consequence is available. In some cases, the events might even end poorly by a traditional sense of success. Events such as the flood of homeless into the Seattle Public Library come to mind, but are these really that bad?

Connor Gravelle

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Recently, much has been made in the real of connecting those outside the institution to those within, but, under closer examination, it is possible to deduce that these relationships are superficial at best. Furthermore, they often involve the interplay of constituencies in a linear manner. That is to say, either those from within experience those outside or vise versa, but rarely does the situation present itself that a complete orgy of interaction occurs. Such an event might be labeled preemptively as counterproductive to the ends of an institution, but it can also be interpreted that the explicit function of such an organization is to create this kind of interaction. Thus, it effectively avoids the trope of being cut off from the outside world.

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Particularly in the sense of institutional architecture, it seems pervasive that a Fourth Wall exists between those exo- and esoteric to the organization. This division is perhaps most often manifest in the form of a wall, but otherwise its forms can be seen in various architectural tropes.

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and media can be uptaken in the progression towards integrated space.

Especially in the case of a fashion school, it seems integral that those inside experientially partake in the interactions of those outside, and that, conversely, those outside are changed fundamentally in their perspective by those within. Often, the case is that our realities are highly curated by our statuses within the complex structures of society. This predetermined interaction establishes a narrow framework that functions quite actively to remain fairly static. Within this, a backlogged cycle seems to have occurred by many accounts in which those who have

Portfolio 2012-2014

climbed the ranks resist the ascension of contemporaries below. Without the necessity to explicate this in further detail, it is clear that its ranks pertain to those of the fashion industry in particular. Therefore, with a site as ontologically compromised in such a diverse fashion as

that at the corner of Olympic and Main, it is paramount to the success of any institution there that architecture arbitrate the contemporaneously choreographed and unimpaired interaction among the subsets of society. Even within the institution, an obvious hierarchy is bound to form. This has, in other cases, been the demise of a truly radical establishment, a fermented sign of complacency and presumption. In a place like Los Angeles, who can ever say what is above or below anything else? The hierarchies otherwise established the guard the ramparts of our social structures have utterly fallen within this city, at least as far as explicated by the physical world. What if an architecture profoundly changed the manner by which these various groups of people, both those internal and external to the institution, interacted with one another? Were they to be removed from their typical frames of reference, they might find before them an entirely reshuffled perception of reality. F***, the Spline This design is arrived to by the effective

Education Bar Studios Seminar Rooms

Urban Lobby

Store Lounge

Libraries Computer Lab Offices

Auditoria Sewing Room Cafe Dying Room

Street

Formal Objects

Production Spiral

Media Core Printmaking Lab

Toy Room

Runway

SCI-Fa

Urban Fabric

Circulation Diagram

Studios / Printmaking Lab

Libraries to Urban Lobby

Sewing Farm Tiered Toy Room

Dyes

to Rooftop

to Runway

Student Entrance

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

Circulation Detail: Production Spiral

Formal Objects

SCI-Fa

3/8â&#x20AC;? Model

bending of space. Whereas typically Cartesian geometries preclude the three-dimensional transoformation of their domains, the action of being has been employed to the ends of creating a space of pulled and distorted proportions. Still, it remains ever valient that those within this capsule are cognizant of their surroundings. The ghosts of a Cartesian past are pervasive throughout both interior and exterior moments across the scheme. Such is the overarching use of the grid, a persistent reference which begs those within its grasp to read the transformative logic of its application. This is achieved through a conic/circular dimension which is controposed to the otherwise orthagonal reliance of the building. Of particular interest is the emergence of complex spatial relationships with a series of typical geometries. We have become so complacent with our technological surfaces and morphologies that we often forget the nacent abilities of primitive geometries. While a spline can only engage the fairly recent discourse of form through a reference to complexity and surface, the culmination of primtitive geometries which we set our eyes so often upon in buildings throughout the history of architecture prove their capacity to more effectively attain contemporary discourses. Passing through these spaces, an inhabitant of the environment is placed in constant relation both to him or her self and to his or her piers. Ipso facto, a dialogue of perceptions is established. Vantages provided by the undulations in the stairs’ trajectories or the interior’s bends, among other things, present new perspectives onto inhabitation through an abstraction of the borders of program. The visual and the spatial intertwine to procure a sort of blurred reality in which the user is to heighten an engagement of the architecture through the conscious intensification or nullification of the senses. Auditory and visual references are eschewed at unexpected points, allotting a experience utterly reliant upon the recognition of the subject to his implications within it. It is his, her or their acknowledgement of their experience which validates this space. Never does the building become obtrusive, as it works at deep levels to relay in each breath agency to the spectator. The aforementioned Cartesian systems, juxtapositions between complex and primitive geometries and decisive choices in place-

Connor Gravelle

ments of irregular spaces allow a fluid existence of space wherein references against what the typical user is accoustomed to offer opportunities for defamiliarization. A Mechanized Pool for Fashion In Koolhaas’ “The Story of the Pool”, we find a derelict avant-garde, cast from its disconcerting motherland adrift to a Land whose image exceeds its own reality. Inasmuch as this transformation is through the foreseeable future tangential to other mass emigrations from Europe during its

suburban wasteland, a riffing drag of Congestion between the weavings of a bucolic superficiality. What it once knew, the welcome of Paris or the citadel of New York, are sure to be demolished. Realistically speaking, DTLA is unlikely to integrate well a conventional (or complacent) ideal of the interaction between the typical institution of haute couture and its constituencies, be they financial, creative or laboral. It is in this rejection of the conventional that SCI-Fa must sustain itself, and, in this essence, its architecture might manifest

les has effectively become a compiled set of shots. As we pass across the city, this ludicrous reversal of roles flips the stale humanism so pervasive in other places. The continuity of the human eye having been substituted by something more akin to an induced epileptic shock, we discover a place constituted by misfit puzzle pieces or a whole from mutilated parts – specificity by complete unspecification. Primarily, this tactic explicates itself through the juxtaposition of Angeleno constituencies in a manner completely unique from any other form of urban composition. It is by

We see in the migration a radicalism inherent to the world of fashion as removed from the social realities and economic contemporaneity… This Constituency, encapsulated within the object of their institution, are to arrive into the greatest dichotomy of metropolitan America… time of diaspora to the New World, its architectural foundations lie in the mechanization of this metamorphosis (or rather, in the Constructivist Pool’s case, stasis) facilitated by the pool and its human literalism. This is to say that both the pool and its swimmers are mutually ineffectual. Likewise, the arrival of an institution for high fashion in Downtown Los Angeles might produce a series of programmatic interactions unexpected and both repulsive yet productive for each party involved.

itself into a spatial sequence which seeks to dynamically displace all those involved. Los Angeles, or Epileptic Shock

the very fact that boutiques and homeless exist within meters of one another that we begin to lust the irrationality of LA.

Whereas other cities have with both the utmost complacency and unwise joviality taken for granted their definitions, we experience a city who refutes the very existence of a trope. That is to say, no one part is allotted the subsistence required to compel a singular reading. A mish-mashed tangle of parts reads before us, Spectators, a string of non sequitur arguments We see in the migration a radicalism inheragainst rationality. By doing this, we ourent to the world of fashion as removed selves are in effect empowered as the acfrom the social realities and economic This blurred urbanity serves to free us tors in this deranged production. Both at contemporaneity as were the Construcfrom the choking complacency otherwise once those on the stage and those before tivists in the fledgling Soviet Union. This ridden across our lives. In effect, such a it, we foremost see performed a surreal Constituency, encapsulated within the complete ostracization from the typical is entanglement of human wills and urban object of their institution, are to arrive into achieved through the eradication of the serendipities. The mere existence of the the greatest dichotomy of metropolitan normative perspective. Like the films so fa- Fourth Wall is inconsequent at a theater America, a slice of urbanity in an otherwise mously composed by Hollywood, Los Ange- where one can say with neither certainty

Portfolio 2012-2014

Los Angeles presents before us a temporal disconnect between the subject and his object to the ends that our perception of reality is inexorably estranged from any frame of reference. A transient landscape crumples beneath our feet the erudition of all certainty and conclusion, a waypoint in the quest towards an impermanent state of urban liquidity.

(animation) vimeo.com/ 92414158 In addition to drawings, renderings and other conventional representations, an animation was produced to detail the experiential procession attained by the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s circulatory systems. In particular, the staircase was explored as a productive means by which to explicate distinctly posthuman encounters between individuals, constituencies and various media within the building. This was by no means a purely presentational game, but rather a tool by which to guage the experiential characteristics of the stairs and forms which assembled to conduct the flow of the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spaces. Nor does the animation deal only with rendered images of experience. A series of diagrams supplant the visuals as demonstrations of the formal intentions behind the spaces. Likewise, a calibrated soundtrack and series of vignettes portray the building as conducive to more than purely optical sensations.

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Formal Objects

SERV ES O LYMP IC BO

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Detail of Regulating Geometry for Stairs

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

Scoop Drawing: Vertical Circulation

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Interior Renderings

nor authority who is the actor and who the witness. Where do we stand within this irreconcilable interplay of constituencies? Without much remorse, Los Angeles has fatefully removed the linear narrative to this problem of perception, founding superordinate to its imposition a world of theatrical transitions. Inasmuch as this approach foregoes the prescription of a generic definition for the city, it enables an infinite possibility of existences to propagate. This is the exponentially confusing LA we must learn to foster, a rampant urbanity which preemptively eludes all the numbed complacency of quotidian life. Escape is Futile: LA Live™ As DTLA gentrifies, the oppressive invasion of new commerce can be felt weighing on nearly every square inch of the otherwise pure ground. Although some reluctance comes at labeling it either good or evil, it can certainly be said that one of the most imminent factors in the experiential forces involved within this change can be felt in the Fashion District, where the constant presence of LA Live seems to clutter the air with a thickened sense of disdain. As if constantly within reminder, the flicker of this phallic monument to consumption can be seen at the most unexpected times, glimmering between the buildings at the most advantageous moments in Los Angeles’ gridded wasteland of urbanity. One cannot help but to feel as if he has been observed, judged and subsequently overtaken by the sheer theatricality with which LA Live perches itself in the neighborhood. Allies and street corners which would in any other situation be of the most mundane nature become battlegrounds for a display of purely hierarchical glory on the part of the Ritz Carlton. This seems to be the unfortunate partition of gentrification reserved for the most putrid corner of the New Downtown, a gleaming symbol of both equal parts commercialism and façadism. As aforementioned, it cannot be purely ironic bathos that the building most resembles perhaps the most contentious piece of male anatomy, long accused itself of having imposed its presence in various places unwelcome.

has become an urban Bastille, forever the ultimate representation of the rampantly overt capitalization of the distraught American urbanism. As is such, it can be purposed that the citizens of Los Angeles gather and ‘brick by brick’ (or sheet of glass by sheet of glass, in any case) disassemble this oppressive symbol of architectural subordination. After all, the destruction of the Bastille, it being important to note that a mere seven prisoners were freed in its liberation, is inherently an architectural spectacle by the people of a begrudgingly and long-accepted hierarchy. In many ways, architecture can come to represent something, irrespective of the wills of architect, client or community. This brings the only acceptable conclusion: LA Live is a parasitic imposition by larger commercial initiates which effectively renders itself an enemy of the urban subset of Our Los Angeles.

It feels very much as if this development, wallpapered by glitz of Coca-Cola,

What can be done to cure such an ailment? Perhaps, the best action (having accepted the futile nature of any plan to dismantle the complex democratically) is to counter it with better architecture. If we come to the logical conclusion about the project’s representational consequences,

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

then it stands by inverse logic that other architecture could work to reverse its effects. What, in the place of LA Live could help to impose a better urbanity on DTLA? Could, in fact, there be such a scenario as Architecture and Revolution? Beginnings and Ends in Architecture Contemporary architecture seems to have a complete fetishism with a dissolution between interior and exterior. Ambiguous spaces abound, and those currently at the helm seem pervasively to recommend such gradients. This is well within reason, but is there no value left to the dramatic juxtaposition between that which is inside and that which is outside? Perhaps, a most successful architecture might take on an interplay between these states. Humanistically speaking, the phenomenological experience ascertained from such an endeavor might produce effects which would make those involved even more cogniscent of their positions within the power of architecture. For example, when someone enters a building, they are subconsciously subscribing to a world. This goes to conclude that they are

actively partaking in an experience which exists both external to and integrated within an extant reality. Their actions taken within such a space would, by logical consequence, have then to both establish and contest their relationship to the prior reality. At beast, this metamorphosis of the individual might produce an entirely novel perception of what once was and what might be. Reality is by the best accounts such a fluid experience, so haphazardly shaped by the mundane complacencies and parameters of our lives. An architecture must grasp this, presenting us with both versions: that which directly confronts us with reality by way of total estrangement (“there is outside, here is inside”) and something more fluid (“Where am I? Where are We”?). This can become particularly troubling when faced with such a heterogeneous environment as Los Angeles. What is the agency of a both a juxtaposition and an integration in a landscape where nothing really exists? That is to say, everything in LA is in a state of complete disarray. Though the condition aforementioned is no catastrophic presistence, necessarily, it

Formal Objects

SCI-Fa

Scoop Drawing: Store and Runway

The sheer urbanity of the city has presumed the potential for serendipitous human interaction, instead forging a vortex of complications, entanglements and overlaps. In these ephemeral crossings, the citizenry of the city coincide, their lives scraping one another in the most minuscule of strokes. To amplify this scar is to heighten their awareness of the transient nature which they cohabitate.

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

Model Photos

causes an interesting predicament when it comes to the flow of space. To break from a city’s fabric, there has to be an established order against which first to work. The Guggenheim defies the gridded logic of orthagonal Manhattan for a more organic presentation of reality. Likewise yet opposite, many works of contemporary Parametricism purport completely to become extensions of realities already extant, deeply tied to both cultural and logical coherencies to the ends that the building almost vanishes.

[We] are LA Los Angeles holds a monopoly on the infinitely variable situations of humankind. Woven into its fate-set tapestry is a simple mechanism which denies the possible creation of new scenarios. Blankly put, nothing new can emerge. Every variable has been fulfilled; every possible interaction has already been satisfied. We are therefore bound to an endless encore, a chain of repeat performances to the ends only that the monster prevails. The actors are unimportant, minor expendables under the shade of the theatricality.

Canonical Images in Fashion and Architecture Fashion has an inherently representational agenda, a trait too often ignored by both those within and outside the field. Such a facet of its dichotomy parallels conditions of architecture. To expose through serendipity these dichotomies is to critically engage fashion and architecture alike as fascinations of contemporary culture through material manifestations. Alphabetical organizations arbitrate these juxtapositions, establishing at times new comparisons and at others reinforcing existing understandings. 1. Dior’s New Look vs. Audrey Hepburn 2. Twiggy vs. Tinker v. Des Moines 3. Punks vs. Corporate Businessmen 4. 1950’s Housewife vs. Bra-Burning 5. Case Studyvs. Skid Row 6. James Dean vs. Drag Queens at Stonewall 7.

Jacqueline Kennedy Idealic vs. Jacqueline Kennedy Mourning

8. Bridget Bardot vs. Pamela Anderson 9. Haute Couture vs. Everday 10. Marilyn Monroe vs. Herself 11. Woodstock vs. Army 12. Tribe (via Riefenstahl) Fashion vs. Western Fashion 13. Authoritarian Uniformity vs. Rejective Individuality (Nuremburg vs. Punks)

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Pertaining Quotes “I just use fashion… to talk about politics.” – Vivienne Westwood. “Give me time, and I’ll give you a revolution.” – Alexander McQueen. “I don’t want art for a few…” – William Morris.“Fashion is not just about trends. It’s about political history.” – Daphne Guinness. “Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath.” – Virginia Woolf Skin The following is a series of excerpts from Alejandro Zaera Polo’s “The Politics of the Envelope: A Political Critique of Materialism”; highlighted text below each quote explicates its relationship to the issues at hand: “The building envelope is possibly the oldest and most primitive architectural element. It materializes the separation of the inside and the outside, natural and artificial and it demarcates private property and land ownership (one of the most primitive political acts). When it becomes a façade, the envelope operates also as a representational device in addition to its crucial environmental and territorial roles.” (77) Especially in the context of Downtown Los Angeles, a disparaging set of economic and political factors have facilitated dramatic dynamics between social strata. In the same stretch of sidewalk, some of society’s most affluent walk beside some of their most (socioeconomically) downtrodden counterparts. Unfortunately, while urban planning may have allowed for (or at least functions complacently with) this estranged human operative, architecture has been less forthcoming in allowing such overlaps. Traditionally, it has merely

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

Scoop Drawing: Distribution of Spaces

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Model Faรงade Detail

Corporate Conformity vs. Punk Individualism

Midcentury Domestication vs. Bra-Burning

Marilyn Monroe vs. Herself

Nonwestern Ideals of Beauty vs. Western Canonizations Thereof

In its dogmatic intake of trends, fashion introduces a series of dichotomies which speak to larger conditions of its socioeconomic contexts. Left as the media aftermath of its own existence – that is to say, in the form of newspapers, blogs, videos et cetera – this can be explicated as a set of didactic images. Across the façade, these are mapped to letters which themselves correspond to larger quotes. The randomization of this correspondence produces serendipitous adjacencies of these images. By selectively filtering light, this both produces a meaningful and affective quality of the building. From within, the effects of the light in terms of shadow and texture entice charged environments, while the macro legibility of the panels instigates discourse. From outside, a connection with urbanity is fostered. Rebellious Self Expression vs. Mass Dogmatization

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2014

On Fashion’s Dichotomies

The set of the Viktor & Rolf show Saturday afternoon in the Tuileries looked like the inside of a white-tiled bathroom at some

The elaborate sets favored by Marc Jacobs, Mr. Ghesquière’s predecessor as artistic director of Louis Vuitton, were nowhere to be

This is why events unnerve me, They find it all, a different story, Notice whom for wheels are turning, Oh, I'll break them down,

Two popular color trends brightening this drawn-out winter are sapphire blue, which popped up last fall and came into full flower

On the evidence of the fall collections that wrapped last week, you might suppose that fashion had decided to return the favor, offer-

Architecture, soft or rigid, was an overarching theme for fall, as an influential handful of designers experimented with lines and

For many in the crowd, it was the return of the prodigal son after his sudden and bitter departure from Balenciaga and its parent

Minutes after the Chanel fall 2014 show ended at the Grand Palais on Tuesday morning, many in attendance converged on the set — a faux

The most surprising thing about the new Dries Van Noten exhibition, which runs through Aug. 31 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs here,

Mr. Van Noten, 55, has been designing his namesake label since 1986. He has 28 years of collections to draw upon, even more if you count

“First of all, packing the clothes was already quite something,” he said. “Quite often there were people on my creative

But what is as notable about the show is how much of it is not by Dries Van Noten. There are garments by fellow designers who have

Arranged by loose themes, the show charts the vertiginous twistings of Mr. Van Noten’s imagination, and the way he absorbs and digests source