No. 8 Sex(y) by DATUM

N O . 8 S E X (Y)

I O WA S T AT E U N I V E R S I T Y Journal of Architecture

DATUM DATUM D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M D AT U M

Dear Reader, Typically, the first thing anyone knows about you, or I, or any of us (besides the fact that we exist) is our sex. In contemporary society, it is this primary identity - sex, that our life is constructed around. For such a fundamental property, architecture has only discussed its relationship with sex and sexuality superficially- as if it was a passing trend. Due to this, our understanding has been reduced to formal metaphors, seductive imagery, idealistic representations of body and space. We struggle separating SEX(Y) from appropriation by consumer and popular media, political outcomes, or our own biases. We fear appearing vulgar or cliche by discussing sex/uality and therefore we forfeit the ability to understand and control our perceptions and theories about these concepts and how they relate to architecture. Datum has been relentless in our attempts to reveal, dissent, and repeat. The work inside is unafraid to expose itself, and expose itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s readers, to critique. The aim is not to be provocateurs. After all, SEX(Y) has implications beyond itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s metallic cellophane, Barberella swimsuit, neon sign facade. Liza Walling Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief Liza Walling Faculty Ad visor Ross Exo Adams Staf f Nicole Becker David Cordaro Bethanie Jones Preston Mila Christopher Perez Alicia Pierce Kellie Walters Megan Zeien

Datum is a journal of A/architecture founded and edited by design students at Iowa State University. The publication seeks to manifest and catalogue Datumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s community of discussion and act as a platform for further inquiry and critique. It is organized around a central theme that Datum feels has been misrepresented, neglected, or needs further examination in the architectural discourse of the Midwest. Datum would like to thank Iowa State University Department of Architecture for their continous support and invigorating enthusiasium for the journal and community. www.datumdiscourse.org

Nicole Becker

Image Addiction

Austin Smock

Photo Editing: The Intern

Christopher Perez

Consumer Neoliberalization

Joshua Frank & Alicia Pierce

Indulgence

Aaron Betsky

This Space Has (a) Sex

Kendra Koch

The Space Inbetween

Grant Bauermeister

An Architectural Narcissism

Tomi Laja & Nicholas Nagawiecki

De Nu

Alex Hochstetler & Joe Kastner

Tourcan

ISU Conglomerate

Disrupt / Displace

A conversation with Carlos Bedoya

Brave Proposals

David Cordaro & Nathan Doggett

Cloud Pavilion

Amanda Hoefling

SOMA

Jasmine Au, Bradley Daniel, Cole Davis

School of Metaphysics

Kellie Walters

Pendulum

Bethanie Jones

Pattern Pleasure

Megan Zeien & Kellie Walters

Humans & Tools

Alicia Pierce

This is the Worst Thing You Will See Today

Daniel Cowden

Spimes, Prothestices, and Identity

Ă lvaro Velasco PĂŠrez

Dis-Figuration

Jake Spangler

Re-Dux

Josh Frank, Preston Mila, Wenquian Wen, Yasong Zhou

The Crystal

Preston Mila

Dream Monologues

I M AG E ADDI C T I ON Nicole Becker

“The essential difference between the culture of the past and the entertainment of today is that the products of the former sought to transcend mere present time, to endure, to stay alive for future generations, while the products of the latter are made to be consumed instantly and disappear, like cake or popcorn.” Mario Vargas Llosa, Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society The practice of architecture itself has lost the ability to draw and imagine. Drawings used to negotiate the dimensions between the human and the cosmic. Today, it has been transmuted into a render factory of sexy images depicting an enhanced reality. ‘Drawing’ in architecture has lost its cultural importance and leads to a misrepresentation of design. Accessibility to visual interpretations of architecture has evoked false realities of the built environment. Do we want architectural understanding to be available to all levels of society but at the expense of truth? Architecture has become a product for the consumption of images; we design permanent structures for an ephemeral society. Immediate access to information has given us image literacy but we lack the understanding. Juhani Pallasmaa, suggests, “information is replacing knowledge.” Rates of literacy have declined and attention spans have greatly shortened thanks to the widespread growth of the image. Our increasing reliance on the image has created ephemeral imagination. We allow images to become accepted as truth, even if the images pose as more authentic than existing reality. They allow the two worlds, one of representation, and one of physicality, to become indistinguishable. Rather than stimulating our imagination, images are replacing it. The mass

production of computer-generated images are imagining on our behalf. In their wake, they are raising a general lack of social visions that have a withering effect on politics, architecture, and globalization. “A coherent view of the world would undoubtedly reveal the insanity of obsessive growth and consumption.”

Juhani Pallasmaa, The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture

Architecture has fallen prey to the consumerism society. The practice of architecture has become a purely economical business with an emphasis on marketing its ‘product’. Motive to produce building after building, creating what imagery it takes to sell the project, turns human setting into a fictionalized representation. Accessibility to visual interpretations of architecture has evoked a specific understanding of the built environment that suppresses the experiential qualities and cultural understanding of the work. But even now, graphic representation has begun to move beyond client persuasion, and has become a practice in deception.

The built environment has become a closed circuit. Physical environments demarcated from their surroundings by self-sustaining boundaries. This has become a commercialized effort to even create a recognizable brand. Images exist independent of their design concepts and are left to be scrutinized as autonomous graphics. This ideology becomes perpetuated in academia when critics and professors prioritize the image as a source for the ‘perfect architecture’ as opposed to the implications of real, tangible design. “Time and again, the projects seemed intent on fleeing the real world of people and places, scale and context; retreating instead into the fantasy realms of convoluted forms with no seeming purpose.”

Oliver Wainwright, Towering Folly: Why Architectural Education in Britain is in Need of Repair

These methods are propagated in the practice of architecture and offer promises that we will fail to fulfill. The proliferation

Amador Hotel in Panama City, Panama; source: author of image making leads its viewers to formulate expectations about architecture, and the perfection of it, which are impossible to accomplish. This leads to questioning whether architecture itself has lost its ability to imagine. Techniques of architecture today design imagery that creates a fictional world neglecting the art of building. Architecture too willingly plays its part in the game of seduction. It entices with indulgent imagery that is responsible for defending the sense of reality. These digital delusions cause architecture to lose value and ethics in its control through imagery. The visual deluge of architecture manipulation causes an association with luxury and exclusivity in a response to mass consumption. We no longer imagine it for ourselves. Architecture has turned into the practice of sexy visualization in an era of image addiction.

PHOTO EDITING: THE INTERN Au s t i n S m o c k

Photography today straddles the line between recording and rendering. As people consistently fall victim to photo editing capabilities of the twenty-first century, so too does the physical world. Architecture cannot fend for itself. Yet those who should stand for its rights are consistently the source of its distortion. The space between our walls should be just as intimate as the space between our fingers. Even so, we feel no remorse when we cover its flaws. As designers, it is easy to lose track of the distinction between production and documentation. Yet this space defines the separation between truth and deception. The life of a building is starved of its personality and its face is covered in makeup. It is staged for a shoot. Still this is not enough. Perfection can only be obtained on a screen.

File, Open, DSC_0094, Ok, Auto White Balance, Exposure +.35, Contrast +15, Whites +15, Quick Selection Tool, Highlight white backdrop, Control C, Control V, Image, Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast, Brightness +40, Eraser, Right click, Choose soft brush, Expand brush size, Soften background edge, Select background layer, Healing Brush, Remove blemishes, Rectangular Marquee Tool, Highlight eye, Control C, Control V, Hue/Saturation, Master Opacity Change, Eraser, Opacity Change, Eraser, Dodge tool, Make Layer, [...] Dodge Tool, Rectangular Marquee, PasHue/ Saturation, Eraser, Duplicate Layer, Hue/Saturation, Master Opacity Change, Eraser, Hue/Saturation, Erase, Duplicate Layer, Color Balance, Hue/Saturation, Master Opacity Change, Burn Tool, Dodge Tool, Save A

File, Open, DSC_0079, Ok, Auto White Balance, Exposure +.35, Contrast +15, Whites +15, Duplicate Layer, Image, Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast, Brightness +40, Ok, Master Opacity Change 75% Select background layer, Duplicate Layer, Healing Brush, Remove Blemishes, Burn Tool, Right click, Select soft edge, Expand brush size, Darken hair, File, Save As, DSC_0079edit, Ok.

File, Open, DSC_0114, Ok, Auto White Balance, Exposure +.35, Contrast +15, Whites +15, Duplicate Layer, Image, Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast, Brightness +40, Ok, Master Opacity Change 75% Select background layer, Duplicate Layer, Healing Brush, Remove Blemishes, Remove cracks on lips, Rectangular Marquee Tool, Highlight mouth, Control C, Control V, Eraser, Right Click, Decrease brush size, Erase all but teeth, Image, Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast, Brightness +50, Master Opacity Change 35%, Select all layers, Right click, Merge Layers, Image, [...] File, Save As, DSC_0114edit, Ok.

C O N S U M E R N E O L I B E R A L I Z AT I O N Christopher Perez

Western society has continually pushed forth a consumer culture that attempts to normalize the consumption of goods. This normalization occurs through the rapidity of changing trends and advertisements that are put forth by corporations and companies. During the Cold War, western nation-states promoted the consumer-subject as the ideal way of life. In order to properly succeed in life and flourish within the neoliberal economy, consumer goods needed to continually be bought and sold. The purchasing of these goods leads to the normalization and subjectification of the individual. The neoliberal-subject, in todays society, has only witnessed an increase in the amount of control that western notions of consumerism has on them.

Returning to the Cold War, the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) heavily critiqued the consumer lifestyle of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). While West Germany spent a lot of time promoting the consumersubject through advertisements, the GDR criticized Western Germany by proclaiming that this way of life was merely a farce. The GDR made it very clear that in order to thrive in a socialist, communistic society, community should be at the core of what it means to exist, not consumer goods and culture. However, given that capitalism was claimed to be victorious, the process of neoliberalization has taken place in many of the countries of the former Soviet Union and further east. This form of control has continually extended its reach and exploited various countries across the world. Today, many countries control the subject through the use of advertisements and other mediums that put forth the idealized notion of what it not only means to live, but how individuals should look, exist, and perform. While these notions are heavily corporatized and driven by financial gain by those on the top, what occurs is the creation of subjects through the promotion of western goods and ways of life. Eastern cultures have seen an increase in the amount of corporations and companies that are purely western being imposed upon their culture. The use of

advertisements, the essential display of how the neoliberal subject lives, is a method whereby the West has the ability to control the subject through the promotion of goods. The consumer culture of the twenty-first century has completely taken control of our bodies. Through the promotion of consumer goods, the neoliberal economy commands of the subject to be possessed, their identities to be controlled, and their actions mitigated. The trends it claims to be “in” are supposedly going to fix us. It paints the picture that who we are is not ideal and that in order to improve our self-image, we must consume objects and remedies that will make us into the perfect person. This is achieved by claiming that certain clothes make a person look ugly, our bodies are disproportionate, our hair is in places unwanted, etc. The neoliberal economy has cultivated a culture industry that works for the benefit of the corporations, while simultaneously subjectifying the individual. This is extremely problematic. Western society for years has continually exploited the cultures and individuals within not only Eastern Germany, but the entire Eastern hemisphere. The constant colonialism through corporate, consumeristic means has lead to the neoliberalization of cultures and societies around the world. The West has become the leading figure in determining what is “sexy” and appropriate for society to consume. This is heavily driven by economic gain in part by the numerous corporations and industries that are heavily westernized in their ways of thinking. In order to put an end to the ongoing neoliberalization of the subject, the chains that the consumer industry has bound to the subject must be broken.

I NDULG E NCE | JO SH FRANK & ALICIA PI E RCE

This series explores the intersection of indulgence, excess, and addiction.

T H I S S PA C E H A S ( A ) S E X Aaron Betsky

The space you are inhabiting right now is not gender-neutral, however bland it might look and whatever laws might pertain to its use. The man-made world is made by men, and women have had to make their own places within it. This truism has governed architecture for millennia and has led to the identification of the discipline with values that we think of as masculine: the imposition of order, the exercise of power through that arrangement, the privileging and exposition of elements that fight natural forces such as gravity and subjugate natural materials to craft. Meanwhile interiors are still places we think of as sensual, sometimes even sensuous, and sensible - values we associate still with femininity. They focus on making us comfortable and they eschew â&#x20AC;&#x201C;if they are well-designed - both literal and metaphorical hard edges. Moreover, buildings are made by male architects working in a heroic tradition, and interiors are made by nonprofessionals, or if they do have a professional touch, by interior designers who are still predominantly either female or gay males.

I first wrote about this situation almost forty years ago in my books Building Sex: Men, Women and the Construction of Sexuality (1992) and Queer Space: The Spaces of Same-Sex Desire (1995), and expected that by now this situation would have changed. I believe that it has somewhat, but much more slowly than I anticipated and only around the fringes of the design disciplines. While women now make up to and even more than half of the incoming classes of most architecture schools, their numbers decrease steadily through professional education and then even further through licensure. The amount of women with a significant influence or profile in the discipline or profession are still very few, and even fewer are sole practitioners. Not only that, but the discipline remains enslaved to the notion that the best buildings are those that are the biggest, the boldest, the most muscular, and resist nature both in form and in permanence with the most success. The biggest erection still wins. As a result, most of our built environment is still an alien wasteland of boxes in which we are forced to live, work, and play.

We subject ourselves to the power of the architect and his client, and subject ourselves to their ordering principles. We do not necessarily like being in these objects with their offices, bedrooms, and other assigned spaces with the rigid enclosures, but we have little choice. We perform the task we are assigned to in the right space, and we conform fully in our behavior to the clues and cues built into the very bones of buildings. Around the fringes of architecture, there has been resistance to such static and restrictive forms, both in the emergence of fluidity in the way in which buildings appear, and in the acceptance of architecture tactics that eschew the over exercise of power. Has this altered the discipline in any fundamental manner? I think not. The undulations that have become common in some architecture practices are the result of the application of computer technologies, both in terms of design tools and in terms of fabrication that allows the complexity of such shapes to appear more or less as the designer imagined them. While some architects use them to just make more fluid objects, others see them as tools that let them merge inside and outside and avoid programmatic and social separation. This is true especially in the work of the late Zaha Hadid and her successor firm, but is also a hallmark of the designs produced by UN Studio, to name just one prominent other practitioner of computer-assisted design. The question of whether the fact that prominent women such as Hadid or UN Studioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Caroline Bos have been central in this movement has made these forms more â&#x20AC;&#x153;feminineâ&#x20AC;? is a difficult one to answer. Certainly Hadid very much resisted the identification of her work with issues or modes of femininity, but she did acknowledge the influence of textiles and forms of architecture that sought to break singular displays of power (such as constructivism) as influences in her work, thus aligning herself with traditions that are outside of the history of the erection of stand-alone displays of power. The emergence of hybrid practices that combine various forms of art and politics is also one we can associate with the work of prominent women such as Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro or Petra Blaise of Inside/Out. They have integrated not just knowledge and skills that come from fields such as interior design, textile design, performance art, and landscape into their

work, but they have focused on issues such as breaking through the barriers between inside an outside and, in the case of Diller, making the confluence of the male gaze and the world-wide security apparatus apparent. However, the larger movement towards understanding architecture not just as the making of autonomous buildings, but as the gathering together of existing materials to create moments of sense and shelter within a larger world that many of see as alien and wasteful has been one in which women have played no more or less prominent a role than in other approaches to the application of architecture. Certainly the presence of a feminist discussion of privilege and exploitation has helped define such new avenues of making that is critical of closed and restrictive structures, but for all that the lack of prominent architects of any sort or attitude remains deeply troubling. In reviewing the absurdity of the dichotomy between the roles women and men have found themselves playing in the designed environment, and the manner in which those roles have become tied in with spatial and building qualities, I speculated in the mid 1990s that the way in which queer men and women historically both used and designed spaces might offer an alternative to such a split. The exploration of spaces that had escaped control and the male gaze in cruising grounds and meeting places for sex, the fascination with turning systems of control against themselves and into means of providing pleasure, and the merging of elements developed for (exterior) architecture and the textures and forms proper to the interior in the design sensibilities of certain late 19th and 20th century architects, from Louis Sullivan to Jan Kotera, and from Philip Johnson to Charles Moore, seemed to me to offer fruitful ways to create an architecture that was both sensual and meaningful, liberating and practical, and ordered and sheltering. Moreover, several artists and architects have over these last few decades been interested in how their queer sensibilities might help instill such hybrid and critical sensibilities into architecture. Pioneering work done by artists/architects such as Mark Robbins and Juergen Mayer H. has been continued with particular success and a grand scale by Elmgreen & Dragset, and queer sensibilities in the use of space has become common in much performance art, dance, and site-specific installation work.

By its very nature, however, this work has remained on the margins of the profession, both because of its messaging (and often materials), and because it does not pursue the making of the types of buildings that still form the meat of the architecture matter. The influence of such work remains in its inflection of architecture towards something less rigid in its forms and purposes. Of equal influence –meaning that it has been significant, but not transformative—has been the concerted study of women and queer architects in architecture history. The retroactive validation of major figures such as Julia Morgan or Charlotte Perriand, as well as the recognition that the contributions made by some architects who we could, again retroactively, classify as falling somewhere in the LGBTQ spectrum, were at least partially tied to the ways in which they had to practice because of their sexual preferences, has helped to create role models for today’s architects that differ from the standard, Vitruvian or Howard Roarkian model of either service to the state or heroic resistance. Some of this research has also drawn our attention to the inherent contradictions in what appears to be the linear history of architecture. The identification of what Mark Wigley described as the “leaky crypt” at the heart of architecture and the many fissures and contaminations opened up in what has come to be known as the discourse of architecture since the assault on its dominant texts by deconstructivist critics has made several generations of architects question the object of architecture. Thus the way we think about, describe, and perhaps design buildings has been both feminized and queered –albeit, again, only in the discipline’s margin. 22

So the work must continue, with this exhibition and with actual design. Architecture is still a discipline that is dominated by men and produces more monumentally wasteful and socially destructive structures than in contributes possibilities and beauty to our designed environment. An awareness of this situation must come first. Then we need to find ways to make architecture more sustainable, open, and beautiful, and we need to find ways to be at home in a modern world that most of us experience as alien and restrictive. To do so, we must turn to the contributions women and queers have made and see how they open our eyes both to the crimes of architecture and to its liberating possibilities. We must also, quite simply, work to make architecture a place where all people, regardless of sex or sexual preference, let alone race, have their rightful place.

Aaron Betsky, is a critic and author of more than a dozen books on art, architecture, and design. Trained at Yale, Betsky has worked as a designer for Frank O. Gehry & Associates and Hodgetts + Fung, taught at SCI-Arc, and served as the director of the 11th Venice International Architecture Biennale. He is currently the dean at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin and Taliesin West. His writings focus on Queer Theory and space and sexuality. This seminole text is republished from â&#x20AC;&#x153;Spaces of Desire: Is Architecture Sexy?â&#x20AC;? edited by Ladislav Zikmund-Lender. Photography by Kellie Walters.

T H E S PA C E I N B E T W E E N Kendra Koch

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We make attempts to be known, to be seen, to connect. Yet we are ill-equipped to breach our corporeal selves. We find our limits and incessantly push outward, seeking and understanding a fusion each other. Our contact is a latent misperception; the self fundamentally unique matter. We read each other--our bodies, our flesh, our selvesand each time we get it wrong. This is the space of breath and flesh, the separation of our marrows. This is the attempt absurd; where bodies fail us. This is where we try, where we end, where we begin again.â&#x20AC;? Stephanie Brunia 25

AN ARCH I TECTURAL NARCI S SI SM G rant Bauermeister

I enjoy architecture. Should I read only architectural literature? I am, in fact, in the business of architecture. I enjoy working in studio. Should I only work in studio? I am, in fact, most productive in that space. Reading about architecture does make my forms more beautiful, my spaces more responsive to human needs, my justifications more salient. Working in studio does give me better spaces in which to draw and build and environment in which I can run ideas past peers. Yet, trapping ourselves in these supposedly ideal creative spaces, physical or academic, can hinder our pursuit of good architecture, perhaps even cloud our vision of what “good” architecture is. According to Alvar Aalto, “The ultimate goal of the architect...is to create a paradise. Every house, every product of architecture... should be a fruit of our endeavor to build an earthly paradise for people.” This quest is innately related to the human condition, which itself is an impossibly nebulous concept. 26

What is a Paradise? Karl Marx would say the means to such an end are perfected equality facilitated by careful societal planning. Jack Kerouac is still trying to stitch a paradise together through a possibly endless journey. Even those lesser-known or less esteemed writers create beautifully valid snippets, murmurs of what it is to exist as a people. Yiyun Li loses, finds, loses, and begins to reclaim the basic code of much of her existence through the creation of language arts in an adopted tongue, renouncing her previous identity.

Reuters, Politico, BBC, all provide written accounts of vital world events, analysis of notable rhetoric, or stories of influential people. Satire, like The Onion, deconstructs social notions of interpersonal relations, turning them on their head, running them through a sieve, wringing out hypocrisy and illogical internalized social behaviors. Non-architectural writing alerts us to globally salient issues, ones that may have the ability to be addressed through architecture. If an issue has been written about through an architectural lens, it has already been identified by the architecture community. Good architectural writing gives incredible examples of how to apply the cultural ideals of humanism to constructs, be they of steel and bolts, landscape taming, purely social manipulations, or of an academic nature. This is undoubtedly important! However, what is presented has already been run through the architect. The conduit. How are we to uniquely channel concepts of the human condition into planned constructs without a robust knowledge of what the human condition may consist of at all? La Sagrada Familia is known by millions of architects and non-architects across hundreds of countries. The structure is one of the best-known works of Architecture in existence. And yet, there is nothing about this work that suggests its origins were from prevailing architectural literature of the time. Rather, Antoini Gaudi’s work was deeply rooted in his interpretation of the culture of his time, particularly of religious matters. Architects attempt to shoehorn La Sagrada Familia in to the trappings of style, highlighting its supposed adherence to noucentista, gothic, or, perhaps most validly, art nouveau formal rules. Yet, none of these academically architectural rules seemed to have had much weight in Gaudi’s mind. Gaudi had a defined drive throughout the design and build process of the church. By many accounts, this structure was a tribute, not to Architecture, but to Gaudi’s understanding of faith and spirituality. Gaudi understood this spiritual culture to place emphasis on the natural world. “The straight line belongs to men, the curved one to God,” he mused. Through this rhetorical drive, Gaudi imagined alluring curvilinear supports in abstracted natural

colors, impossibly holding the naturalistic masses above. He imagined a phalanx-like entrance, a grandly inviting yet mysterious threshold. Other inspiration was more blatantly Christian in nature, such as the named facades telling the stories of the Nativity, the Passion, and the Glory. This method of using pure culture as a driver for design creates a wealth of poetic inspiration ready to be transformed from literary to physical. Regardless of the changing users’ familiarity with or belief in the Christian source material, the adherence to distinctly human culture resounds equally with those familiar with architectural literature and those who would confuse Corbusier with the name of a small European city. This is, of course, not to say that Gaudi entirely dismissed architectural thinking of the time. In order to realize the goal of the deeply cultural forms, Gaudi understood the use of the Golden Ratio, chiaroscuro, and structural considerations. These architectural aspects were extremely important tools in the creation of poetic works. And undoubtedly Gaudi’s interpretations of the source material in an architectural sense were enhanced or at least guided by Architectural literature of the time. Yet most importantly, Gaudi understood the existence of a truth greater than Architecture, perhaps not explicitly in the teachings of Christianity but in the submission to culture as a driver of built spaces instead of vise versa.

As architectural author Joan Bassegoda writes: “Looking toward the future, the lesson of Gaudí is not to copy his solutions but rather to look at nature for inspiration … nature does not go out of fashion.” This conclusion moves towards a more pure understanding of Gaudi’s success, yet loses itself in a purely architectural statement of nature’s value. Gaudi didn’t begin with nature as the inspiration, but rather a distinct cultural understanding of nature and its relation to human perception of the Heavens, and more nebulously, human existence itself. Simply following the predetermined architectural doctrine of naturalistic inspiration or styles is not sufficient to create lasting works. Art nouveau, supposedly based in nature, did in fact die, as all architectural styles eventually do. There is an alarming trend among much of architectural academia, a misguided confidence in our line of creation as entirely selfcontained, self-sufficient, their imposition righteous. Perhaps, no architect embodies this philosophy so completely as Peter Eisenman. His works “stand mute, like cold abstractions,

intellectual exercises far removed from the experience of the average person, and not so few intellectuals,” in the words of Richard Jocas addressing Stanford University. This analysis was meant as praise, yet to most rightfully sounds like a condemnation. How could this outcome possibly create an “earthly paradise for people?” It does nothing for the layman, and is at times too far abstracted to be used as useful guidance in academia. This is intentional of Eisenman. “I think architecture ought to explore architecture.” To Eisenman, Architecture is for architecture, by architecture. It overshadows material use or constraints (“I’m not interested in Peter Zumthor’s work or people who spend their time worrying about the details or the grain of the wood on one side or the color of the material on the surface”), accommodation (“I would never live in anything I design”), or even the very idea of evoking spatial response on an emotional level (“I have always been on the side opposed to phenomenology”). Interestingly, Eisenman claims to value “architecture as a conceptual, cultural, and intellectual enterprise.” Following previous arguments, this should ensure a true Architecture. Except for one key issue. Eisenman’s culture, intellect, and therefore concept, is trapped solidly in the realm of architectural thought, one devoid of political policy, the tangible and intangible needs of humans, or a search for purpose in life rather than purpose in form. Creating truly immortal works lies not solely in following (or deconstructing) any sort of academically agreed upon architectural style or doctrine alone but rather in the creation of monuments to a greater, holistically human understanding.

D E N U | T O M I L A J A & N I C H O L A S N A G AW I E C K I

How does one create imagery that is honest yet evocative- intrigued and pure? When the architecture is one with nature, its only valid to represent the experience entirely as that: natural. Imagine a building: monolithic, cubed concrete sprinkled upon Latvian grassland. Each room highlights forest, water, or skya knowing eye of the natural world forever present. This space is separate yet one with nature: protective and transparent to beautiful earth. Human interaction, scale, and activity is represented by taking the materiality of the architecture to create a living and active form within.

From the transparent glass to the humble oak trees, the marble sculptures create a dichotomy of presencea here but away representation of the body. She is yearning for something more, relaxed. And the figure closer to the barrier is curious, wise, longer aged. The imperfect appearance of body adds to the honesty. The beautiful landscaping of curves on both the figures present the human scale directly as transparent as the architecture.

Undisguised. Understated.

t.o.l.

TOURCAN Alex Hochstelter & Joe Kastner

The initial conversation, which led to the creation of these films came from a published study by Heather A Rupp, Ph.D. and Kim Wallen, Ph.D. titled “Sex Differences in Response to Visual Sexual Stimuli.” The study reviews and analyzes the ideas of gender and sexual neurological response. A study referenced within the publication discussed an exercise in which both men and women subjects were shown visual sexual stimuli (images of both men and women). The men in the study responded neurologically to images of the women, but not to the images of men. The women subjects responded to both images of the men and women. The question then arose, is it the women who participated in the study which were more responsive to the stimuli, or was it the woman subject matter, which provoked more response? The idea of inherent human sexuality as something of the objective or subjective. TOURCAN

The film opens with shots of soft pale skin. Long frames of a still body mark the details of an individual. Chest, hand, collar, before revealing the face of the subject. These details are accented with sharp, ‘tinny’ noises which begin to crescendo as a white, viscous curtain begins to cover the once defined features. Familiar pieces are referenced, becoming less and less recognizable. This buffer begins to overtake the once-personal form. As the identity of the subject becomes less and less definite, the final shot reveals the humanoid form, surrounded by darkness. As the unease of the sharp noises dissipate, we are left with the argument of objectivity within cognition. We as humans like to romanticize sex. Attributing contextual security and influence. Though, this work argues that the psychological and cognitive components operate through distinct mechanisms and circuitry, affected only by the need to populate. N E W N O W

The second film in this series makes use of the samefootage as the first (Tourcan), with implementation of a strong contrast that overlays the screen, creating a grittier palate with strong movement on each frame. Though the footage is remains

similar, this film is able to directly respond to the nature of the first with discussion of a heavy influence from modern urbanism in consumerism aâ&#x20AC;&#x2039; nd commodity. The Nâ&#x20AC;&#x2039;EWNOW. As the similar features are worn away by the pall of previous anonymity, strong color rushes wisp across the once white shroud, contrasting the dark and static body which it covers. Loose images of shapes, bodies, and faces dance within the tension of the thick matter to the rhythmic pulse of the track. As the color overtakes, the final shot reveals the humanoid form, this time covered in a neon movement which suggests the superimposition of exterior. The NEWNOW. The neons, which draw attention in each frame, open conversation of the psychedelic, characterized by hallucination or distortion of perception and awareness. This work argues that these notions of perception did not fade with the psychedelic era, rather they have transformed into the ideas of urbanism in consumerism/commodity/ sex and cognitively invoked within society. The N â&#x20AC;&#x2039; EWNOW.

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T H E R E D PA G E S

DI S RU P T / DI S PL AC E | L A BI E N NALE DI VE N E Z IA

A contingency of students from Iowa State and Roma Tre identified the Bakken Oil Pipeline, specifically the portion that cuts through our home of Ames, as a FRONT and a field of action to REPORT. This REPORT is a record of a dialogue about the complexities of architecture’s relationship to political and social issues. Many of the ‘fields of action’ in our world today are complex issues, and the Bakken Pipeline is no different. The conflict surrounding he pipeline is intensely political but is also spatial. Any built or designed space may address certain, specific needs of the pipeline, or conversely, those it affects. However, we can not see a way in which architecture helps solve problems arising because of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Through transportable models we reinterpreted the unique spatial issues present during and after the construction of the Bakken Pipeline at a human scale. Rather than providing a clear answer, this process stirred up additional frustrations, questions, and concerns about architecture as an agent of social change. What follows is a RECORD of this dialogue. The representation of the physical conditions of Iowa and the Bakken Pipeline stem from The Land Ordinance of 1785, which established a system of nested grids that would extend across the land of the United States. This Euclidean subdivision of the land was a total geometric system, applied without consideration for culture, environment, or occupation.

The process for this geometric installation included arrangement, disruption, and the displacement of the established grid. To exhibit the ‘front’ in Iowa, the displaced grid condition is constructed and represented through a transportable, repeatable, cardboard unit. The unit is crafted in three sections with multi-directional scores, which allows the piece to twist into a three dimensional form as well as lay flat for transportation efficiency. Upon completion of making in Ames, the process of disassembling, packing, and transport of the installation to bring to Venice began. To do so, the units were packed into carry-on suitcases and flown across the Atlantic. Each of the 28 students that traveled to Venice from Iowa brought 25-50 pieces with them, for a total of about 900 units for the installation in Venice. The aggregation and disruption of the gridded units reflects the consequences of the Bakken Pipeline, invoking a larger discussion about architecture’s role in displacement, not only of people and space, but also intangible dimensions of the human condition (regarding social, political, economical, and environmental conditions). The disruption of land and the displacement of peoples as a result of energy infrastructure construction is a global issue. It is crucial to understand the spatial effects of these types of displacements, as they will need to be addressed by citizens of the future. This is a reminder that this REPORT is not an abstraction but rather a human and social condition with far-reaching consequences beyond the spatial concerns.

B R AV E P R O P O S A L S A conversation with Carlos Bedoya

DATUM: I think we should start off with the question that pertains to our theme: what do you think is sexy? Carlos Bedoya: In our office we have a lot of critiques about the fashion nowadays of immediately having renderings. Although you haven’t already defined something, which could be pretty dangerous, it is a superficial way right now in society to see things (the way they are rendered). We don’t have enough time nowadays to go deeply into things and we just touch the surface. 44

I think it’s a very interesting topic. Yes, it has a lot of meaning because on the one hand it could be explaining in that (rendering) sense but maybe talking about what could be sexy. I could say that something for me which is sexy is being intelligent, smart, etc. It’s a lot of things because it is a good smell, a good taste, a good feeling. I could say that all these elements are part of something that should be sexy. I mean, it could be even a relationship with a woman and a man or whatever. I think that when you fall in love, it’s because you see all these qualities in one person or in one specific thing. So I think it is the same in the case of architecture: something that has all of these qualities, that are making little things into a whole, are the kind of things that turns something into sexy.

D: Could you talk about how you found your firm and how that whole process came about? CB: It was nothing that was planned. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know, at least in my case. I think that since the beginning I had a goal that I wanted to find my own office, my own practice. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know when, or how, or with whom. I started to work with a Mexican-based office and in this place I met my three partners. I started to work in 2002 and one of the partners, Victor, was already there. Later, Will and Victor quit the office. They started to work with another office and do work on their own. I kept working for two or three more years. The last year I was there, Wonne (the Belgian partner) started to work at the same office as me. We became friends and we started to do things together. In the mean time, we decided to start doing things such as competitions, small commissions, and we started to work in our different houses. All of a sudden we decided to rent an office, because it was going to be cheap to share a space, and start to work together and share projects. So I started to work with Abel on one project or with Victor on another, and Victor started to share this project with Abel. All of a sudden we started to share all of our projects and realized we were all working together. Because although we were working in teams, suddenly everyone started to give each other their opinions and we started to work as a team. It happened very naturally. This is how we started to work as an office. It was nothing that was planned, it was something that just happened. What I think is interesting about the firm is that we started being friends, which is a little bit different if you plan to join with somebody to make your office. There is another kind of relationship. I think in our case it was useful. D: You and your other three partners are all from different regions. One is from Argentina, yourself and another from Mexico, and one from Belgium. How have you seen those different countries or cultures combine into one firm? CB: I think that it has been pretty useful; we complement each other. Instead of having problems and differences of thoughts that one way or another separate you from each other, it is the other way around. We realized that every point of view gives us

the possibility to grow and learn more about the other. Because in the end we have very different profiles and backgrounds. For instance one partner studied in Belgium and then worked in a very pragmatic firm. Everything is organized with a grid and it is very straightforward. I used to study in Mexico and then I moved to Barcelona to do my Master degree so there was a very deep study in terms of theory, because they couldn’t build that much. Abel use to work a lot in the construction field. In the end, I think that the four of us together made Productora. It’s not like in other cases where you know that it’s pretty divided and defined by each of the roles of the people in the office. Here, in this case, I think that Productora couldn’t exist without the four partners. D: Just looking through the texts and publications that you have published, how does this aspect of design relate to your firms overall mission? Do you have a mission to produce text or how do these writings help your work develop?

CB: I think it’s a way to rethink your work. For instance, we released our first book five years ago. It was like another project for the office. It was like doing a house or a building, it was the same to design this book. We got involved completely in the content and format of the book. The book is in a very particular format because its divided into parts. One part that is just drawings, photos, or something that expresses feeling, environment, concept, or idea. The other part of the book was talking about the projects, such as floor plans, sections, more technical information. It helped us to try to make us stop and think about what we were doing in that precise moment: what were our intentions with our architecture? What were we trying to communicate as our idea? It was a way to try and organize our ideas. You have to try and organize an archival of projects and see what are the differences and what are your interests. It’s impossible to know what your intentions always are. You discover what they are. This helped us to understand where we were standing in that specific stage. It’s a way to explain and understand yourself in order to say something. D: How do you connect and foster relationships with artists? CB: One way or another - to be next to other professions, careers, and backgrounds - it allows you to open up your mind and have

other information that allows you to be a better architect. I think that this is an advantage. We were always next to the art world and it allows our clients to be a part of this background. The artists were our first clients. They allow us to do the kind of architecture that we believe in. Some of our friends that are engineers and lawyers don’t have as clear of an understanding about the aesthetic and brave proposals in terms of architecture. They allow us to develop what we live in. D: What do you think is the role of the natural environment within architecture, specifically relating local context to implementation? CB: It is essential in the design of something. Yesterday we went to the I.M. Pei museum in Des Moines and it was a beautiful museum, but it doesn’t have any meaning because the relationship between the building and what is happening around it could be the context in terms of the people who are going to use it, the amount of money, or whatever. Talking about environment means talking about everything which is around the building. I think that this relationship is essential for the design of anything. We tried to, one way or another, establish a dialogue between our work and what is happening around us. D: One last question: what is your favorite thing? CB: I think to be a good architect you need to know how to appreciate anything. You’re going to have to design all of a sudden dining rooms or know which type of environment you enjoy, even to drink a good wine and eat good food; to rest in a beautiful bed in front of a beautiful landscape. I don’t have something specific, sometimes I really just love to have a good meal and be in a beautiful landscape.

Carlos Bedoya is a founding partner of Mexico City-based architecture firm Productora with the goal of producing “clear and legible projects with a clear gesture/sign”

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C L O U D P AV I L I O N | D AV I D C O R D A R O & N AT H A N D O G G E T T

Not the face but a face one without need for a mask, I am cast. Filled I am creased, teased I am tethered. I am not the image the scattered shrunken, stretched fraction is not, but a momentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mimic, for I am neither the projection nor reflection

which is thrown unto this thin skinned shell form from your mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye understood not to understand not the face but a face not all, but one soma | amanda hoefling

S C H O O L O F M E TAP H Y S I C S J a s m i n e Au , B r a d l e y D a n i e l & Cole Davis The investigation delves into material/ immaterial practices in the context of a former military base in the production of a School of Metaphysics and a Waiting Room to be located on the North/Western side of Governors Island (a 172-acre island in Upper New York Bay, approximately 800 yards from the southern tip of Manhattan Island) looking out toward lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. The island is a popular and visible seasonal destination for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers offering a diverse and eclectic array of art and culture, recreation and relaxation. The word Metaphysics comes from the Ancient Greece and is a combination of two words: Meta meaning over or beyond and physics meaning the physical, material world. By definition, it is a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes Ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology. (Goche) 54

Waiting is a meditative state of awareness which bridges the physical and metaphysical. This happens through our senses. Governors Island contributes to this through its atmospheric conditions. By creating a rhythmic landscape, strategically placed instances can become waiting rooms. Places where students, faculty, and visitors are able to consciously and subconsciously enter a new realm, the Third Realm. Impacted equally by the physical and metaphysical, this realm is the moment when one approaches a state of absolute tranquility.

My mind is a pendulum. Thoughts swinging strong From west to east And there is no lull between them Dense, cold metal am I Incapable of stopping myself Of ridding my disparity To calm these polar magnets

P E N D U L U M | K E L L I E WA LT E R S

The one to the west An open door to captivating possibilities Where daises dance in the wind And your solid figure waits Your mind wants to mingle with mine And in such I see a room of color light pastel illumination in geometric shapes upon a white walled backdrop but the east keeps pulling me back to its dark back room dimly lit where the powder still lay on the kitchen table where the drink so gullibly dripped down my throat took my voice away and allowed my strength to go down with it. Where a man stripped me of my clothing And my liberty went with each article Shredding the bit of independence That draped my body

And now there is you With your sophisticated manner And eloquent speech That are not masked by facade They expose your structure, Your bones showing through remarks Allowing me to see the torrents in your own mind Authentic and pure and transparent. And somehow you find grace in me Your mind follows mine Searching for identifiers And desires to know where the coruscation begins As much as I would love to reveal myself My pendulum swings back From your western skies Oh so relentlessly back to the scorching east. I want to be masked in your pastels In a room of delicate beauty To be free from the dark clearing That so easily entraps my light Please oh please pendulum Stop swinging. Stop moving for the dread of this eastern seaboard And move toward western skies Not for mere instantaneous interaction But simply to bask in beauty In growth to be free from my swinging pendulum

P AT T E R N P L E A S U R E Bethanie Jones

A function within our ability to recognize and understand dynamics is visual pleasure. The rate at which one can process something determines their visual response. Qualities known to control visual keenness are contrast, stimulus repetition, symmetry, and prototypicality. Along with visual and semantic priming, these variables increase prudence of visual pleasure. Contrary to the claim that visual pleasure traces to objective stimulus features, beauty is found in the spectator. From the antecedent events of Plato, we find that philosophers and theorists understand beauty as an element within the observed; that the thing itself produces a pleasurable experience. As a result, to this objectivist view, countless psychological pursuits were made in order to determine the vital contributors within beauty.

Theoretical collections precede to the Sophists, suggest that any external stimulus may conceivably be beautiful if it pleases our senses. Within this frame of reference, beauty is an operation of idiosyncratic traits of the perceiver where all attempts to catalog and mandate the laws of beauty are futile. In expressions like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or “degustibus non est disputandum” (taste cannot be debated), the subjectivist view is reflected and directionalized through the social constructivist prominence within the constant reality of change and culturally relative essences of beauty. Modern philosophical analyses largely refute the objective versus subjective position. They propose that an understanding of beauty arrives from patterns through a human-object relationship that seeks identity. Opting an interactionist perspective in order to pursue and identify those patterns is crucial. Therefore, beauty is embedded in the processing experiences of the spectator that arrive from the interplay of stimulus properties and cognitive procedures. Often, what humans describe as “beautiful” fall into the category of moderate episodes that, by its nature, equal to the recognition

of a simple melody: an abstract shape or a human face. Beauty is extraneous to visual value. Considering the development of modern art, a piece can have visual value without being beautiful and without generating an experience of visual pleasure. Conversely, a painting that is â&#x20AC;&#x153;aesthetically pleasingâ&#x20AC;? may be without any artistic merit. The understanding of visual value, in contrast to beauty or visual pleasure, often involves patterns.

HUMAN S X TO OLS Megan Zeien & Kellie Walters

The use of objects as instruments to construct, cultivate, and protect accredits the very existence of our complex societies today. The development of our society depends on humans ability to create using tools and objects to weld, drill, and create. Humans and tools have a co-dependency for their advancement. These objects that one uses, that one depends on, become a part of an identity of self, of one’s body. The brain senses what is used in human hands as an extension of our body, allowing the body to function as an internal-external mechanism. Studies have shown that tools form a part of an image aura that directly connects the tool to the arm, allowing the brain to sense it as an extension to the human hand or body.

Relating the body to tools reveals a complex relationship between the corporal perception and objects of use and advancement. This relationship goes beyond ideas of making and of using. This extension of the body to include that of an object is a very unique phenomenon, one that reveals the depth of our bodily perception. It must be considered the aspect of sex, of gender, into these phenomena. There is a parallel study within objectification theory among not so much object perception, but self-perception. Specifically, a study discussing women’s greater disparity of self-objectification to actuality. When one sex, at the very corporal foundation, perceives her body so differently, how does she assimilate tools differently into her body’s visual aura? How might this change the usage of instruments? For Women to be liberated as creators, providers, and cultivators through tools, it must be adapted through their usage of objects along with their bodily perception. For women to perceive tools comfortably as an extension of self, their perception of self must first be found. Personalization and perceptive responses with objects affect the way we can understand the presence of ones’ sense of self and the sense of one’s own body.

As designers, we know and work with the experience of the visual. When one is dissociated with the visceral sense of aptitude, it can lead to lower sense of adequacy, which can be connected to an inability to envision oneself fitting into the culture associated with the discipline (Bandura, 1982). It is apparent in both architecture and industrial design that gender inequality is prevalent and expounded upon when it comes to traditionally male-typed tasks, such as building. Within the field of industrial design, we discuss ergonomics in hand held objects and are often given the example of tools. We contemplate how we can implement accordances for safety and ergonomics, but when the topic of gender comes up we look to examples of gendered tool kits. Instead of semantically communicating in the same way as â&#x20AC;&#x153;regularâ&#x20AC;? tools, these sets have undulating curves, pink accents, and are entirely smaller in size (Apollo Tools). These tools have been modified for accordances better fitting female physiology, but are inadequate in size, function, and semantic inclusion.

When we looked at women holding and using tools in our shop, We noticed that women were approaching builds undistinguished from their male counterparts. Hand position, stature, and mannerisms while maneuvering the tools were indifferent regardless of anthropometric differences. This showed that in light of initial apprehension to shop practice and although the culture and social systems around working in shop may still promote a gendered stereotype, the actual process of making is alike regardless of gender. We work to rid the social structure of gender stereotypes, but seldom look to the semantics, accordances, and sources of validation as origin of change. This needs further examination into the minute pieces coming together to form gender inequalities and stereotypes in our disciplines. We need to start looking at what practices, systems, tools, and justifications of expertise are innately keeping women from pursuing our disciplines, or we essentially are contributing to the gender disparities we experience.

1. An approach to ergonomics evaluation of hand tools (Kadefors, Areskoug, Dahlman, Kilbom, Sperling, Wikstrom, Oster, 1993) 2. Body Conscious? Interoceptive Awareness, Measured by Heartbeat Perception, Is Negatively Correlated with Self-Objectification. (Ainley, Tsakiris 2013) 3. Grip strength and endurance: influences of anthropometric variation, hand dominanace, and gender (Nicolay, 2005) 4. Hand strength: the influence of grip span and grip type (Fransson, Winkel, 1990) 5. No Universal Constraints (Ambrose, Lazaurus, Nair, 1997) 6. Rapid Assimilation of External Objects Intothe Body Schema (Carlson, Alvarez, Daw-An Wu, Verstraten, 2010) 7. Self-efficacy Mechanism in Human Agency (Bandura, 1982) 8. Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change (Bandura, 1984) 9. Tools and means of implementing participatory ergonomics (Kuorinka, 1997) 10. Women Engineering Students’ Self Efficacy – A Longitudinal Multi-Institution Study (Marra, Bogue, 2006) 11. You Are What You Touch: How Tool Use Changes the Brain’s Representations of the Body(Haggard, Longo, 2017)

T H I S I S T H E WORS T T H I NG YOU W I L L S E E T O D AY Text and Photography by Alic ia Pierce Not the hundreds of advertisements, capitalizing on data collected about you to sell you things you don’t need. Not the copious amounts of violence in the media. Not the ever quickening poisoning of the planet. Not the slow suffocation of the public education system following policy change and budget slashing. Not the sensationalization of news and politics. Not the ignorance and intolerance running rampant through your facebook feed, not to mention spilling out of your president’s mouth. Not foreign policy in a hundred and forty characters or less. Not the exploitation of resources and people by a select few. Not the immeasurable loss of life in the pursuit of power and wealth. No. This. Nudity. Society instills in us a belief that nudity is inherently sexual. Modesty is praised. Nudity is shunned. It is seen as inappropriate, pornographic, and obscene. We are taught that a naked body is shameful. It is hidden from the public eye, censored on television, and withheld from the public sphere. A body can be erotic, yes, but it is so much more. A body is a tool, a means of transportation, shelter, and protection. A body is a body, not a scary sexual object. Not all representations of nudity are pornography and not all nudity is sexual. Censorship of nudity preserves rape culture. In shaming the naked body, we are maintaining the mentality of victim blaming. Any degree of nudity is not a sexual invitation, because a naked body is not inherently sexual. In perpetuating modesty as ideal, people become ashamed of their bodies. They are uncomfortable undressing in front of a doctor, even to the point of harm to their health. It is time to desexualize nudity. Witnessing a naked body will not cause you harm, censoring a naked body will. Get over your naked self. We’ve got far more important things to deal with.

SPI M E S , PRO STH E TIC S , AND I DE NTI TY Daniel Cowden

This is about how a future society, in which prosthetics have been normalized and we are surrounded by spime objects, might claim the ability to construct identities which are both personal and physical. We will operate by assuming that being human requires having a physical component, an operational entity. In other words, the “body” is a fundamental part of who we are as humans. The definition of “body” includes a physical identity that is also operational. Spimes are relevant because they allow people to be more involved in the process of “making.” They are developed using an open source model, made possible with an all-capable design tool, and are informed by the vast amount of information they make available. Prosthetics are the site for intervention because they propose a radical new relationship of object and human. For the first time, humans have created physical objects which must be internalized. As a result of constructing the body with spimes, we may unlock a future where the production of identities is made very accessible. LET’S GET ACQUAINTED

“The most important thing to know about Spimes is that they are precisely located in space and time. They have histories. They are recorded, tracked, inventoried, and always associated with a story. Spimes have identities: they are protagonists of a documented process. They are searchable, like Google. You can think of Spimes as being auto-Googling objects.” (Sterling, SIGGRAPH) Other characteristics of spimes that are fundamental to this discourse include ones that are made using CAD and other rapidprototyping methods that can design virtually anything. IDENTIFYING THROUGH MAKING

The act of making is fundamental in order to identify. Everyone participates in this, not just experienced sculptors, architects, and render artists. Sure, artists are more in tune with this phase of creating identity, but we all participate in it when we put together outfits or layout the furniture for and decorate our apartment. The moment when objects internalize identity is when they are

being made. Making is not synonymous with fabrication: the making phase must be comprised of design, prototyping, and fabrication. How can we create a culture of objects where an intimate process of making is made accessible to more people? Next, let’s identify historic and current object-human relationships. It is clear that for the artisanal object it is the artisan whose identity is worked upon during making, but what identity is constructed when objects of mass production are made? Do these objects still internalize human identities? Interrogating Sterling’s account of the history of human-object relationships, Sterling identifies four dominant classes of objects historically: Artifacts, machines, products and gizmos. “The differences between [these objects] are found in the material cultures they make possible, the kind of society they produce, and the kind of human being that is necessary to make and use them. Artifacts are made and used by hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers. Machines are made and used by customers, in an industrial society. Products are made and used by consumers, in a military-industrial complex. While Gizmos are made and used by end-users, in whatever today is – a ‘New World Disorder,’ a ‘TerrorismEntertainment Complex,’ our own brief interregnum.” (Sterling, SIGGRAPH) Artifacts construct individual identities of the artisan when they are being made. It seems that both machines and products construct the identity of the governments, corporations, firms, or other, singular, groups who can obtain the skills and resources to create objects and remain competitive in markets. Gizmos construct the identity of networks of the aforementioned “groups.” They construct the identities of entire cultures in their making. The trend is clear: our objects are increasingly becoming expressions of the collective as opposed to the individual. SPIMES

How do we create a culture of objects that allows us as individuals to identify more thoroughly through making? Spimes are a big step in the right direction. Spimes come after gizmos on our historical timeline of object-human relationships. Spimes are revolutionary because they are objects that advocate for the construction of individual identities. Spimes record and make available vast amounts of information and include a mechanism in them that always allows them to be connected to the internet.

Because of this, people can mine for data about spimes, about their lifespan and stories, about their specific version/design, its exposure to certain chemicals, and about how sustainable they are. This information is personal in an unprecedented way and it is all available as content for one to understand and design their personal spime with. The increased capacity for identifying through making derives from the “owner’s” increased access to information about his/her prosthetic. For example, if you knew about the manufacturing processes for all of your clothing you could design a composition based on this information. Whatever the hypothetical means of accessing it are (Sterling suggest RFID-chips) this is not a very radical vision. The internet has already revolutionized how information is collected, disseminated and processed. Sterling refers to the barcode and the internet as precedents for how this system will work.

The process of making spimes is also more accessible because it operates using a model similar to open source software. This means that anyone with the skills can work on its virtual model. For spimes, which are designed using computer-aided design software, the skills are easier to learn and more versatile. If it is not already the case that just about anything can be designed with CAD software, then the statement will hold true for CAD’s predecessor. The other necessary component of accessibility is a way to prototype and materialize ideas that are accessible at a similar level as it’s open source design. This idea is represented with the 3d printer. There has to be a way to create a workflow that can tap into both the virtual and physical states of spimes. Spimes facilitate the democratization of information, and make means of production, personal design decisions, and workflows more accessible. PROSTHETICS

Prosthetics are in a class of their own when it comes to human-object relationships. These are some of the first objects which are internalized by humans. Furthermore, they will evolve to do more than just replicate and replace. “Instead of considering technology as external to the body and as extending and massively augmenting it, we can conceive that in fact our human bodies might look the same except that they are now recolonized by nanobots and nano sensors and in fact we probably need more surveillance inside the human body.” (Stelarc, Art, Design, Future of Man)

While Stelarc’s “nanobot” prosthetics are literally internalized, the fact that they change our operational identities calls for their psychological internalization. They provide the body with new functions and new ways to be aware in the world. Once your body has acquired new functions it must learn new ways of acting, of performing. SPIME PROSTHETICS

If spime prosthetics are made, a completely new relationship between object and human will be created. We will experience the internalization of an object which has already been internalized in it’s making through the individual’s own expression. Spimes are unprecedented in their capacity collect and make available amounts of information. All spimes will have internalized identity, but whose identity they internalize needs to be directed. Prosthetics have unique characteristics that call for them as objects to be internalized. They need to be internalized if they are to become our “body”, and they will need to be if we are to embrace a cyborg type of existence. Thus, an opportunity is brought forth: the spime prosthetic. Our “body” is the frontier in which we can use spimes to construct personal identities in a commercial, capitalist society, through democratization of information and internalization of spime objects which rely on this information. At last, if the means of production are made more accessible they will inevitably construct a culture which is in control of its individual identities. If the universal means of prototyping could also fabricate and these machines (represented by the 3d printer) become spimes themselves, the whole process could be completely autonomous. Couple this independence with the special object properties that prosthetics have and you could develop a “workout” that can build your synthetic body parts. Your spime 3d printer which has, as an object, internalized your identity becomes the machine for, as quickly as you can design, building your body. So, the prosthetic has now, on yet another level, internalized identity because it is fabricated by a spime. Ultimately, a cycle of body building that can work on your synthetic self is realized, resulting in a completely organic prosthetic. “The body is as contingent as anything else that we do. We should be able to choose how we redesign our bodies.” (Stelarc, Art, Design, Future of Man)

D I S - F I G U R AT I O N Álvaro Velasco Pérez

Sexy is out-of-fashion. This becomes rather natural as its allure got lost following the breaking of its taboos circa late-’60s. Paradoxically, the attraction of sexy’s seclusion got de-mythified by its own liberation. Nowadays, sexy still speaks to us, however it doesn’t question us anymore. Now it only reveals itself as yet another ground for social, economic and epistemological power struggles following analysis à la Foucault. However, even more drastically, sexiness has fallen trapped under suspicion of dishonesty. In a post-modern time in which we search for authentic inter-personal relationships, sexiness emerges as a mask that hides unfulfilled promises. It is the seduction that Baudrillard analysed in De la séduction(1979), in a search of a deeper understanding of the “sacred horizon of appearances.” His argument is not a pursuit of hidden meanings, but in remaining at the level of the manifest signs. However, Baudrillard’s attraction for ‘seduction’ rather than ‘interpretation’, points to the fact that in the ‘sexy’ there is a delay between the sign and the signified. It is the—unfortunately many times experienced, in my case— personal acquaintance with the delusion of sexiness. The sexy offers an image that conceals something that is never revealed because is never present. This movement ranges from the basic idea of make-up to the high grounds of marketable products in consumerist societies. The architecture of the sexy never draws beyond facade. 70

However, if the ‘fatal strategies’ of the femme fatale seem rather exhausted, could we think of its reversal as a way of overcoming it? What I would like to discuss here is the possibility ‘dis-figuration’ as a mechanism that could overturn the strategies of contemporary sexiness. If the sexy conceals a void - being the attraction towards the mask, rather than towards what the mask covers-, could we understand dis-figuration as a paradoxical mechanism in which repulsion is the way of revealing what lies beneath? If we consider Francis Bacon’s Study of the Human Head(1953) (fig.1), the figure at the centre of the composition relates frontally

Figure 1

to the spectator. His face appears as a gruesome skull concealed behind a veil. The sinister mouth marked by an overemphasised smile and the eyes oversized by the lens of the spectacles dramatise the face in a state of half-life half-dead character. There is nothing seductive in Bacon’s composition, save by the mysterious halo produced by the vertical folds of the veil. However, that attraction is dispelled when behind the veil we intuit the repulsive features of the skull. It is the veil that crosses the whole composition and mediates between seduction and repulsion. Indeed the question of how painting operates in relation to a veil has been present through out its history. In the well-known story of the competition in which Parrhasius deceived Zeuxis,1 the centre of the query is the veil; it is the object of his painting—Zeuxis admitted his defeat when he intended to unveil Parrhasius’ work, when in fact the veil was the actual painting—but also the mechanism of deception. As Pliny the Elder chronicles the anecdotal contest, painting is the art of deceiving by reproduction of reality as it ‘really appears’. Painting moves in the tension between concealment and revelation, between what is seen and what is shown—which not necessarily come together. 1 Pliny the Elder narrates this story in his The Natural History(77-79 AD). In chapter 34, Pliny narrates the story of Zeuxis, an acclaimed and scrupulously careful craftsman of his art. On entering a competition, Zeuxis represented some grapes, “painted so naturally that the birds flew towards the spot where the picture was exhibited.” Delighted by his trick to the animals, Zeuxis demanded that his competitor, Parrhasius, unveil his work. However, on attempting to reveal the work, Zeuxis discovered that the curtain itself, truthfully replicated, was the painting of his contender. Becoming aware of the trick, Zeuxis acknowledge his defeat as his grapes had deceived nature but Parrhasius had tricked the artist.

This tense moment can be exemplified by El Greco’s Veil of Saint Veronica(1586-95)(fig. 2). El Greco painted several version of this theme drawn from an iconological medieval tradition. The story follows that on his passion, a pious woman - Veronica by name - wiped the sweat and blood of Christ’s face. The suffering face of Jesus was impregnated in the veil, remaining as a permanent mark of his features. Taken as a portrait of Christ’s dis-figuration, the veil recalls the scene in the Gospel in which Christ is trans-figured in front of his disciples.2 In these two mirroring moments of the life of the Man-God, the latter represent a theophany - or visible manifestation of God—,while in the previous his divinity is concealed. However, it is through the tradition of his agony that El Greco represented the portrait of Christ. The veil of the Veronica is not a scene gathered in any of the four gospels. The actual name of the woman in the medieval tradition derives from ‘vera icona’ or true image. In El Greco’s depiction, the veil of the painter is the one that wipes the secluded image of Christ in the Passion. What is shown is not the suffering features of the agony - what is represented in the tradition of the Veronica—, but the painting presents a serene gaze of the Man-God looking back the beholder. We could define El Greco’s mechanism of vera-icona as the act of painting that moves the question of the figure beyond the veil, to a zone of indiscernibility - not in the sense in which Deleuze approach Francis Bacon’s operations that generate a common space/overlap between man and animal3, but—between human and divine.

Nevertheless, it is Deleuze himself who draws the relationship between El Greco’s idea of religious figure - or what we are calling here the disfiguration of the vera icona - and Bacon’s disfiguration. Deleuze remarks the liberation of celestial figures in El Greco, in which “Figures are lifted up and elongated, refined without measure, outside all constrain4” that figuration imposed in previous traditions of painting. Looking back at Bacon’s Study of the Human Head, his mechanism of disfiguration is different to El Greco’s flaming Figures or the veil that wipes the agony clearing the divine face in the vera icona. Bacon’s faces are disfigured by torn, spasms, stretching and contractions which are actions that rather than coming from outside are initiated within the Figure5. 2 Mt 17, 1-8 (KJV) 3 Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: the Logic of Sensation. 2003. Bloomsbury Academic. London. p.16. 4 Ibid. p. 7. 5 Ibid. p. 11-14

This strategy dismembers the body of the Figure from its material structure. A mechanism that finally culminates by breaking the preponderance of the face in figuration: “the Figure, being a body, is not the face, and it does not even have a face. It does have a head, because the head is an integral part of the body.(...) As a portraitist, Bacon is a painter Figure 2 of heads, not faces, and there is a great difference between the two. For the face is a structured, spatial organisation that conceals the head.6” Bacon’s mechanism of disfiguration is a rupture of the concealment perpetrated by the face. His Study of the Human Head develops an operation of erasure of the facial features through the scrubbing, or rubbing of it, through its scratching or white (pink-grey-and-blue) washing. However, his relation to veiling is different to the wiping of El Greco. Bacon describes his take on the veil as:

“Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence-a reconcentration... tearing away veils that fact acquires through time. Ideas always acquire appearance veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils.7” His mechanism of disfiguration is an action of tearing down, an act of unveiling. Rather than producing a true image vera icona—, painting operates as dis-covering, in a rather Heideggerian notion of truth as aletheia - unconcealment8. The portrayed head manifests itself as head, disfiguring its facial features. However, that movement of unveiling is paradoxically produced by the visual erasure produced by the veil. A third mechanism of dis-figurative painting was developed by Jean-Michel Basquiat in his short - but extremely productive oeuvre. Neither wiping nor erasing, his mechanism could be called defaci/ement©. Profoundly shocked by the police killing of his 6 Ibid. p. 15. 7 Francis Bacon interview with Hugh Davies. June 26, 1973: cited in Davies and Yard, p. 1 8 Rodney R. Coltman, The Language of Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Heidegger in Dialogue. 1998 SUNY Press, p. 38.

Figure 3

Figure 4

friend graffiti artist Michael Stewart, Basquiat reproduced the brutality of the event in his painting of 1983 (fig.4). The image depicts two cartoon-like policemen surrounding an anonymous figure in the centre. The inscription defaci/ement© crowns the scene establishing the doubling dynamic of the painting. Defacement or defacimento [Italian] is both the clobbering of the officers but also the operation of the artist. The central black figure is the victim of both trajectories, becoming a contemporary form of martyrdom whose gleaming crown of thorns “refers at the same time to the apotheotic Christ(...) and to the African American heroes ” he depicted. Keith Haring remembers how Basquiat was projecting himself in Steward’s incident, “it was like it could have been him. It showed how vulnerable he was.” Similar mechanism was used by Basquiat in his iconic Self Portrait of the same year. However, the cancelling out of the facial features into blackness follows a different mechanism to that of El Greco or Bacon. If we look at Basquiat’s Made in Japan 1 (1982)(fig.3), the de-framed surface constitutes the veil into which the portrait is inscribed. The defacement is carried by a series of overlapping of lines of contour in pale blue, intense red and black. The face is framed and reframed, deformed by an “aggressive attack on physical intactness.” Fig.5 shows Basquiat posing next to an unfinished version of the painting to which a further series of disfiguration were carried out in the canvas. However, rather than Bacon’s process of erasure, Basquiat moves through reaffirmation and accumulation that attack the face, drawing it into a state of living dead . The agony that El Greco wiped out into vera icona is here restated in a movement to go deeper into the suffering figure whose vanishing point is the triumph over torment. The defacement into black figure, as opposed to the wiping and erasing, is produced by accumulation. Basquiat mechanism of

disfiguration operates through re-vei/aling in order for the concealed to emerge. The three mechanisms of disfiguration—vera icona (wiping), un-veiling(erasure) and re-vei/ aling(accumulation) move between the conceptual operation and its material outcome. However, the mechanisms of disfiguration are Figure 5 far from a flee from the visual presence of the body into abstraction. Both Basquiat and Bacon were extremely obsessed with anatomy. Oliver Berggruen recalls Basquiat’s traumatic experience when, as a child, the graffiti artist was run over by a car . In his time in the hospital, he was given a volume of Gray’s Anatomy that he obsessively copied. Berggruen argues that the episode was present in many of Basquiat’s composition, culminating in his Anatomy(in 18 parts) (1982). Similarly, Bacon is known by his studies of human body, in compositions that reject any narrative, focusing on the anatomy of the Figure itself. However, both understand anatomy as a movement beneath the surface: into broken bones, torn members, open mouths, fractured skeletons...that constantly try to examine the inner condition of the Figure. Dis-figuration, being it through the mechanisms of vera icona, unveiling, or re-vei/aling, is an operation whose aim is to make what is concealed to emerge. It posses a direct challenge to the exhausted strategies of seduction of sexiness. Disfiguration counters the visual spell of sexiness in visual arts, opening the possibility of understanding painting as operations in the veil. To the condition of ‘concealment of something that is not present’ of the sexy, disfiguration obsessively intends ‘to resur(face) what is concealed’.

Alvaro Velasco Perez is a PhD candidate at the Architectural Association School of Architecture where he previously studied a masters on History and Critical Thinking on Architecture.

RE-DUX Jake Spangler

In an investigation on expectations surrounding masculinity, Redux brings awareness to restrictions imposed upon male figures in regard to gender roles and gender performance as a result of social conditioning. In a society where men are assumed to act in a certain way, actions of nonconformity and subversive behavior frequently lead to control. This non standard behavior is often subjected to speculation on gender identity and sexual orientation. This work symbolizes the discomfort and challenges faced in such context. Pairs of shoes cast into blocks of plaster create a wearable sculpture piece that consequently limits motion. Through a drudging walk, the wearer’s ‘shoes’ begin to physically deteriorate in a performance embodying a liberation through reduction to one’s self and acceptance of being.

T H E C RY S TAL Josh Frank, Preston Mila, Wenqian Wen, Yasong Zhou

Hunter’s Point Shipyard exceptionally situates itself in a community rooted in history. Only two miles south of downtown San Francisco, residents will find a reprieve from the city noise in this 750 acre mixed use community. 78

Residents of “The Shipyard” will have the distinquished opportunity to live among a unique museum that curates the land and culture of Hunter’s Point as an artifact through spatial, social, economic and architectonic curation. It becomes a keystone between the past and present as it reconnects San Francisco to Hunter’s Point’s history. Admire the blending of past and present as you witness the interaction of movement within the encapsulation of history in over one million tons of glass. The designated corridor guides you through Hunter’s Point’s fascinating history, from the seizure of land by the US Navy in 1939 to one of the leading urban expansions in San Francisco’s history.

I was parasailing in a Walmart parking lot popping pills. Gave my shirt away to this girl walking into Walmart. Drifted into the Wendy’s and saw u. Hopped on a bus and there was a fight. Happened to be a bunch of amateur wrestlers. Wannabe WWE type dudes. Somehow ended up on a plane and dropped straight off into a green lawn behind the Capitol.

DREAM MONOLO GUE S | P $

Smoking weed. Watching Holy Mountain. Got a view of the Bund to my left. Got u to my right. Swell. 2000 Acura Integra GSR. Gen 2 Mugen wing rockin the RC Starks. 5% tint. Titanium metallic. I was with u again. We made love, but we’re not even in love. Then u disappeared. You were at my house. Still just as beautiful as ever. I could feel the tension. You were leaving for a long time. Whatever’s best for you. MT Your address. We opened the gate. Music was vibing from upstairs. Nujabes. Aruarian Dance. Feather. There’s no way this is your place. Fuck. Is this what love is?

Tried to go fishing, but it got dark. In NY. Didn’t book a hotel. Friends dad got him a RHD Hyundai Genesis with air suspension and custom interior. Got a be recommendation but ended up somewhere else. Playing basketball. Terrible. My teeth start falling out. The feeling was there. The presence was real. You reveal yourself to me like a Phoenix from its ash. I love u like the dancing. Boosted Electronic Blue Pearl 2000 Honda Civic. CTR mirrors. BYS front bumper. Kosei K1. 15s. Was selling mollys on the street via moped service. We would slowly scoop up someone beneath and exchange pills. All while this was happening we had prostitutes just chilling with us. “Dumpling service” I came back to the states to rob a bbops with Brandon and Nate. We hid from the cops in a Walmart warehouse. Chinese camera market. La Vie en Rose by Louis Armstrong playing in the background. Romanian dude.

Got me waiting for this sweet experience that was promised for both of us. the thing is, u never came. im still here. that shit doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even matter no more. all of this - wasted. we were supposed to have each other. i cant listen to u anymore - dont believe anything u say. i thought i did, but nah, i dont. i cant go on like this. bold n heavy lies - unfulfilled promises. u just keep talking. they see thru all of this. its all a front. drop it. keep quiet. silence is a motherfucking luxury.

T-H-E A-R-C-H-I-T-E-C-T-U-R-E L-O-B-B-Y

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