Textile Border by David Bly

Textile Border:

Stitched Space at a Frontier Edge David Bly Chair: Lisa Huang Co-Chair: Martin Gundersen Master of Architecture Spring 2012

Semper no longer grouped architecture with painting and sculpture as a plastic art, but with dance and music as a cosmic art, as an ontological world-making art rather than as representational form. Semper regarded such arts as paramount not only because they were symbolic but also because the embodied manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s underlying erotic ludic urge to strike a beat, string a necklace, to weave a pattern and thus to decorate according to a rhythmic law. -Kenneth Frampton

Contents Introduction Part I: Spinning Wool Part II: The US Mexico Border Part III: The Colorado River Wash Back Matter

Introduction

Textile ... can be seen, as it were, as the primeval art from which all other arts - not excepting ceramics - borrowed their types and symbols, whereas it itself seems quite independent in this respect. Textile types evolved within the art itself or were borrowed from nature. -Gottfried Semper

Semper calls textile foundational to the other activities of making. This is the catalyst for this research. It is an investigation of making and place-making using textile as a fundamental motivation. The project begins with the act of spinning wool. By learning to spin and practicing the craft of spinning, we can develop an understanding not only of the different methods of joining fibers together in the making of textiles, but also the underlying mechanics of the spun piece of yarn. This is understanding making at its most fundamental type according to Semper.

In order to tie making to place, I use the language of diagramming and drawing to pull an architectural language from the act of spinning. This in turn can be applied to a place, namely the border between the US and Mexico, specifically the portion that is not marked by a geographic feature. It is in these sections of the border between the Pacific Ocean, the Colorado River and the Rio Grande that in the late 19th Century, a series of obelisks were placed to mark the border. The rhythm of the border monuments is strikingly similar to the rhythm of spinning and the friction that holds the fibers of wool together is distinctly analogous to the unique gravity that draws the constructed conditions that give a border its space. This means of making within the context of this place are intended to act as a catalyst for architectural creation.

Part I Spinning Wool

Spinning wool is the process of aligning raw wool fibers and twisting them until friction holds them together. Wool comes in several varieties from numerous species of sheep and there are several ways of processing, spinning and finishing the fibers. The principal varying factors are staple length, diameter and strength which each help to determine the quality and final use of the wool. In spinning, two principal methods are used: worsted and woolen. Worsted wool is spun from roving which is wool that has been combed to align the fibers parallel to each other. This results in a stronger tighter spin. Woolen spinning uses rolags which are carded bundles of wool that are aligned against the direction of the spin resulting in an airy lofted spin. Spun wool is then dipped in hot water, effectively tightening the fibers and setting the twist so that the work doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just come unfurled.

The following images are from my own investigation into spinning. There are a number of mechanisms for spinning wool, the simplest being a spindle. The spindle aides the user in creating the twist as well as holding the finished product before it is set. This is a slow process but allows for a great deal of control. Following the spindle I began to use a Charkha wheel, a compact spinning wheel that speeds up the process significantly. I worked primarily with woolen spinning. My goal was not to have an inside and out understanding of the different methods, rather I wanted to understand the process and essential rhythm of spinning. This ritual of spinning daily for the first half of the duration of this project gave me a different approach to making and thinking. Following the images are a series of diagrams that are the beginning of this architecture from making. 9

wool. The following drawings diagram woolen and worsted spinning as well as two common variations. The first introduces pieces of textile or flecks into the fibers as they are spun. This is found in fabrics like corduroy or chenille. The second is a method of alternating between worsted and woolen creating inconsistencies or slubs. This is generally not desired, but the rough nature of it creates a unique texture.

woolen

worsted

flecks

slubs

Photographer Henk Wildschut recently presented a new book of images entitled, “Shelter” which, in a deadpan fashion, documents temporary shelters made by illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers on their journey to a new country. The manner of photographing that Wildschut employs, centered with a standard focal length and an almost inconsequential composition, suggests the strategy of an archivist presenting a specimen, or in this case, a new spacial typology. The shelters are a result of increasingly stringent control over borders in wealthy countries as well as well as the increasing divide between totalitarian governments and their populace. They exist on the edge of a sociopolitical frontier. It isn’t a new idea – leaving a poor or threatened life to find wealth and freedom in a new place, but the rise of border control has resulted in an abundance of these new spatial constructs that exist outside of the law.

These shelters are woven from all manner of scrap materials: tarps, wire mesh, abandoned clothes, posters, and colorful quilts and blankets. It is this materiality that this research intends to explore – the woven edge of frontier space. We will look first at the textile origins of architecture as proposed by Gottfried Semper and then at the role of textile in the context of current frontiers. We will examine textile materiality suggested in frontier space as well as the frontiering quality of textile space. In this research we will consider frontiering at several scales of space-making: the individual, the built, and the cultural. Finally, we will look at the relationship of frontiering and textile to the typology of the porch and its role in frontier space-making at these three scales. What often comes to mind when we think of frontier in the United States is the idea of Manifest Destiny or the westward expansion of the States, but frontier or frontiering exists

less and less in this geopolitical manner as every inch of land has bean mapped and claimed by different political entities. The term frontiering suggests more broadly a continuum of action across an edge. Frontier is the edge, and frontiering is a spatial dialogue between the two entities that share it – it is the role of the edge in binding one condition to the other. Frontiering is a sort of fringe activity, a means of occupying frontier space. It can be subversive or nonconformist, exploratory or groundbreaking. It is always manifest in forward motion and radial expansion – there is no static frontier. Here we can see a relationship between the frontier edge and peras as it is understood in Heidegger’s Building, Dwelling, Thinking. Rather than a point of termination, the edge is a point where a thing “begins its essential unfolding.”1

1 Martin Heidegger. 1977. Basic writings: from Being and time (1927) to The task of thinking (1964) (New York: Harper & Row), 356.

Textile first refers to things woven or capable of being woven [fabric]; second, it suggests a spirit or a particular idea in making, i.e. textile doesn’t just suggest fabric, rather almost any material can be in essence textile. Here we will look to Semper’s writing on the four categories of raw materials: textiles, ceramics, tectonics and stereotomy. Semper clarifies, “every division is to be taken in it’s broadest sense, which leads to a number of mutual relationships that will be identified and pursued.”2 The word fringe as it applies to frontiering ties textile materiality to frontier. Fringe refers to something at the edge of normal but it is also a loose edge of fabric. Here we might think of the word hem as a more general 2 Gottfried Semper, Harry Francis Mallgrave, and Michael Robinson. 2004. Style in the technical and tectonic arts, or, Practical aesthetics. (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute), 109. 18

definition of fringe, though hem tends suggests confinement, which would be antithetic to the dynamic nature of frontiering. The German translation of hem is saum, which we can translate back as seam, which may be a better way to consider the fringe. The fringe as a seam is a way of binding two discrete materials or conditions to each other. In this way, the seam relates textile to frontier. We will consider this further in relation to Semper’s writing on the General-Formal nature of textile.

how they are treated. “Architecture,” asks Semper, “like its great teacher, nature, should choose and apply its material according to the laws conditioned by nature, yet should it not also make the form and character of its creations dependent on the ideas embodied in them and not on the material?”3 It is important to note the distinction between formal motive and form, as Semper rejects the notion that fabrication developed from ancient forms, rather that it was prescribed by universal need.4

Gottfried Semper writes extensively on the origins of architecture in textile. It is critical to understand this role as there are key relationships between origin and frontiering. It is also important to understand the exclusive role according to Semper of textile in spacemaking. Semper identifies two formal motives for fabrication: first, it is established by a human need, whether practical or symbolic, and second, it results from its materials and

3 Semper, Gottfried. 1989. The four elements of architecture and other writings. (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press), 102. 4 Joseph Rykwert makes the distinction that this “materialist law is prefaced by the categoric statement that the work of art can only be understood as a whole and can not be analysed into a series of stimuli to be considered under laboratory conditions.” This reminds us of what Heidegger writes in Building, Dwelling, Thinking about the oneness and the preservation of the fourfold. Each part of the fourfold is understood a priori to be part of the other: earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. Here, then, exists a Hermeneutic Circle in which the motives of fabrication are both delineated and self-referential. This is an important

chapter on textile in Der Stil, he begins to look at the typologies within textile. Binding and covering are presented as the two essential roles of textile. From this Semper analyzes different forms taken on in these roles. Formally, binding is linear and covering; planimetric. He breaks this down further into the string, the band, the cover, the seam, and the hem. The German for seam is naht, with which we will see a linguistic relationship to the knot5, or in German, knoten or nodus. When we look at these ideas in terms of frontiering, we will start to see spacial

He further delineates the material motive into four categories determined by their particular attributes: Textile is pliable and and tough, ceramic is malleable and able to be hardened, tectonics are linear and elastic [relative strength] consideration when we look at the role of textile in frontiering, as both establish a context for the other and both are part of the others origin. 20

about a particular axis and stereotomy is strong and dense [reactive strength]. Semper considers textile foundational to the other activities. The types and forms of the others are directly seen in textile, which in turn receives its form from nature or is devised from itself. In Semper’s General-Formal

5 Rykwert emphasizes this particular speculation of the relationship between knoten (knot) and naht (seam). Semper also references the wordplay in an end-note: “It was not until after I had written these words that I found Dr. Albert Höfer’s Sprachwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen … confirming my assumptions about the link between these concepts and words.” [Semper, Style, 164.] Semper’s speculation is with the Latin root form noc. I also include the linguistic speculation regarding saum (hem) and seam. Interestingly, noc appears in the Latin necessitas [necessity] which Semper (I imagine before he knew of the linguistic relationship) picks out as a formal motive. This further supports the postulation of textile’s primitive nature.

relationships between the node, line and plane. The string is exemplified in the wreath of leaves which “encloses but does not bind.”6 The string also suggests an array of knots along its length. The band has an inherent strength and binds and frames disparate parts. The cover embodies the devise of shelter and enclosure and exists as the sole planimetric form as described by Semper. The seam is like the string but it exists between two planes. Without the two surfaces, the seam becomes like a string, unbinding. Finally, the hem is a synthesis of string and seam. It is the seam created from surface folded over and sewn to itself.

the first fabrication of necessity, so it reemerges in the act of frontiering. Necessity dictates textile, and origin and frontier exist in a framework of necessity. At the aforementioned range of scale – the individual, the built, and the societal – we can begin to observe the role of textile in necessity, and thus frontiering. At the societal scale,7 textile is evoked in the way social space is occupied. At the fringe of this occupation exists social frontiering. Social [or sociopolitical, as it almost always relates also to the fabric of politics] frontiering is often subversive and rarely conformist, but textile can also suggest a playfulness, that, while not necessarily subversive, still is capable of eliciting This research proposes an inherent change in the sociopolitical condition. A recent relationship between textile and frontiering. 7 We will begin at the largest scale and work It suggests a primitiveness in frontiering space backwards because one does not exist without the other, that relates it to the origins of architectural and here I believe it is best to understand each smaller thing’s context before we examine the thing. That’s not to space. The primitiveness is the result of necessity say that the smallest scale doesn’t influence the largest – it which exists both in origin and in frontier. It is does. In this case, influence works in both directions, but necessity that binds textile to frontier. Textile is we will work in terms of contextual scale rather than the

6 Semper, Style, 114.

more ambiguous scale of influence.

example of this non-conformist playfulness is found in participants of a fringe sport, parkour. In parkour, or free running, athletes begin to reexamine the way one ordinarily occupies an urban setting. The textile notion of pliability is applied directly to the human body – rigorous strength and flexibility training allow the athlete to traverse the urban scape in a manner unintended by planners or architects. The seam between occupied and unoccupied space is widened and new seams are created where occupation was previously not conceived. The role of the urban fabric is brought to question by a simple and playful rethinking of occupation. A much more unfortunate example is seen back in the opening images of shelters at the fringe of illegal immigration. Here is a sort of forced frontier, where occupants are pushed to the edge and must resort to a meager attempt at domesticating the space between

political turmoil and asylum. Necessity dictates the textile shelter, the weaving together of scraps. What is also interesting is the line [string] that connects these shelters [knots] and the imagined line that exists just beyond the border that calls to question whether it is the border or the line of those waiting to enter that dictates the edge. Frontiering at the built scale can be exhibited in the typology of the porch. In this case, we can see the influence of frontiering on textile rather than the textile evoked by frontiering in the previous examples. The porch takes on the role of tempering oneself both to necessity and domesticity. It both relinquishes and embraces frontier and domestic space. The porch can be understood as seam or possibly as hem. The seam suggests something preexisting bound to something new, but the hem is the result of a thing folded and bound to itself. The porch has a both/and relationship in this case: It binds the former to the latter [in both directions, 22

depending on the vantage point] from interior to exterior and ties each condition to itself. The porch both anchors the domestic interior and makes it self-aware. It reveals frontiering and cedes domesticity. Another example is evident in the nomadic tent. This is probably the most obvious display of textile in frontiering, as it is most literally and purely textile and it results directly from necessity. Anni Albers, textile teacher at the Bauhaus, describes the necessity that arises from the nomadic independence of place: “such independence surely brought on a further immediate need, that for a transportable shelter. The same type of material which proved so suited for clothing was also appropriate here, a material that was pliable above all other characteristics and therefore easily portable.”8 She continues to describe the shelter’s effectiveness in shedding 8 Anni Albers, “The Pliable Plane: Textiles in Architecture,” Perspecta Vol. 4 (1957): 36.

water, protecting from rain, providing shade and its efficiency in assembly and tear-down. At the individual scale, textiles in frontiering can be seen in the manner of one’s own dress. Today, according to Albers, clothes while largely dictated by aesthetics still exhibit some of the reactions to necessity that are evident in the nomadic shelter. They behave as the interface between body and space. While clothes can begin to effect sociopolitical realms, they generally only do so within the framework of aesthetics and style. Strictly at the individual scale of frontiering, clothes operate as dictated by necessity. Like the nomadic tent, they are reduced to only what is essential. These examples of frontiering aren’t generally bound to just one scale. The athlete in the urban fabric operates at the individual scale and collectively at the societal scale in the way they engage their body and how they interact

with the built environment. The middle scale becomes the interface between the two. The porch engages a dialogue between interior and exterior, built and unbuilt, but it has both a larger role as a sociological typology and an effect on experience at the individual scale. Like the overlapping that happens in Semperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s modes of making, frontiering often weaves between scales. The emphasis here is not to delineate frontiering based on scale, rather it intends to reveal the role of textile at each scale to emphasize the relationship between textile and frontiering. This relationship is reciprocal. Frontiering, in its necessity commands textile and textile in turn evokes frontiering. The edge of frontier is analogously and concretely textile in material. Textile in its essence is expansive, dynamic and non-conformist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the material of frontiering. 1

Part II The US Mexico Border

Shortly after finding the images of border shelters by Henk Wildschut, I stumbled on another series of images by photographer, David Taylor. His book, “Working the Line” is a series of images of the border monuments as they sit currently. Sometimes they are in the middle of nowhere and sometimes they sit off to the side of a busy highway, always austere and solitary. The images don’t simply document the monuments, though. There is a dynamic nature to them, a narrative quality. The monuments as they’re photographed don’t simply act as border markers; rather they become pieces of a larger woven chord.

It is these monuments that brought me to realize a strong analogous connection between spun wool and a border. Both are composed with a certain complexity and both imply a twisting friction and apparent gravity. Most of all, the monuments start to give architectural space to that idea of rhythmic making found in spinning. What follows are some of Taylor’s images as well as diagrams that start to look at the space of the monuments as they relate to the border and the newly constructed fence. The diagrams also begin to overlay the language of the previous diagrams that investigated the process of spinning.

A map showing the location of each border monument through California, Arizona and New Mexico. Note the break between California and Arizona where the Colorado River becomes the border for 24 miles.

Border Monuments, the fence, the landscape and the people that occupy it. Images by David Taylor.

The process of diagramming began with looking at specific Border Monuments at several scales. Monuments 204 and 207 were chosen specifically for their relation to the Colorado River. They sit prominently at either end. I was interested in this break of such a monumental string of objects. What happens here? Are the monuments more pronounced or somehow more special? Or does the intersection of an imagined border with a physical one create space of its own? What is the nature of the fence here? It certainly canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t run the twisted length of the river.

Monument 207

Here the monument behaves like a knot, forcing things to move around it. Even the ground has shifted, leaving the monument high above the fence. The drawings that follow look at the section of the monument as it sits in relation to the fence and the landscape. I overlay the drawn idea of the spinning diagrams as well as the larger scale rhythm of the monuments. The idea here is to create a drawing that operates at multiple scales as well as in plan and section. It is a first study that begins to explore how I might touch the ground architecturally.

The photograph on the right shows the monument as a fairly prominent moment, but as we back up, it is swallowed by the urbanization of San Luis as well as heavy traffic that approaches a border crossing a short distance away. What is intriguing here is the breadth of the border. There are two fences here with a wide no manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s land in between.

Monument 204

Part III Colorado River Wash

The final portion of this project focuses on the 24-mile stretch of the Colorado River where it becomes the border. This site is unique as a part of the border and on its own. In the early 19th Century, a compact was made between Mexico and all the states which the river passes through dictating how much water each state can take, leaving Mexico with whatever was left. Unfortunately the agreement was made during a surplus season and as a result, the river has since been tapped dry. At the border the last of the river is diverged into canals for California, Arizona and Mexico. What was the mighty Colorado became a dry ghost of a basin. The surrounding land on both sides has all become farmland, growing mostly feed crops. The border no longer corresponds to the river; it has become its own line. Even the dry bed of the river shifted long ago. All these dynamic elements give the space a textile quality.

Here I propose a series of pavilions that take up where the monuments leave off. Each pavilion is a culmination of the process of drawing and making that precedes it. They also respond to a name given them, taken from different methods of border control:

Tire Dragging

Air Patrol

The Fence

Search Dogs

Seismic Sensors

Sky Box

The process of naming allows for a conceptual framework to formalize and organize the language of drawing that has developed.

There are certain things unique to each pavilion â&#x20AC;&#x201C; mostly found through the naming â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and there are certain things that tie one to another. While one is not visible from another, there is an implied direction in each that points from one to the other. There is always a source of shade, whether it is built from the ground or a gossamer roof that floats overhead. Each has a source of fresh water and a place for rest, to sit and collect. Each pavilion also has a space for an artist to potentially react to the site. It is a flat sunken part of the ground left clear with the idea that one way of occupying the site is to create art in it.

These maps show the relationship of the border to the river as well as the agriculture land in contrast to the dried river bed.

Tire Dragging

Tire dragging is a method of border control by which the ground is swept clear of footprints each day allowing agents to see any fresh footprints left by illegal crossers. For this to work the ground has to be clear of grasses or anything that might mask a footprint. The idea of this pavilion is to create a ground that mimics the form of tire dragging but has a sectional and material quality that would essentially render it useless. Length and direction are the principal formal motives â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the pavilion sits in a particular part of the landscape that has been shaped by a shifting river. This has given the ground a direction of its own, one that the architecture mimics.

Air Patrol

Helicopters regularly fly over the border regions to easily spot illegal immigrants in a landscape void of natural shelter. Here is a wide roof for shade or other things more clandestine in an inhospitable environment. The cast shadow is as much a part of the ground as the constructed landscape.

The Fence

The fence is now the most prominent feature of the border and it continues to grow even now. It has a massive scale, but nonetheless people have managed to keep it porous. In this pavilion, a long wall sits in the site but is easily traversed. It operates as a shelter rather than a barrier and it remains porous to cast shadows.

I remember years ago shocking my friends by saying I would prefer to go to Churchill, Canada, to walk the tundra than go to Paris. For me space is where I can feel all four horizons, not just the horizon in front of me and in back of me because then the experience of space exists only as volume. -Barnett Newman

Image Credits 16, 19, 20. Henk Wildschut 21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ amf/146161759/ 22. Tapestry by Gunta Stรถlzl, teacher to Anni Albers. Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin, Inv.No.252 24-25. Javier Tellez. One Flew Over the Void. Single channel video projection, 11.30 min. 28-29. David Taylor 30. Google Street View 31. Google Maps; USGS 34. Google Street View; David Taylor 35. Google Maps; USGS 38, 42, 48, 54, 60-61, 62. David Taylor