[d e s i g n
rodney
a.
bell
portfolio]
The following body of work would not be possible without the relentless criticality, endless support, and constant challenging of the dedicated professors at Southern Polytechnic State University. And to my family, who has supported me throughout my education, I am eternally thankful.
[d
e
d
i
c
a
t
i
o
n]
plo ym ed en uc t a rec tion og nit ion
[ born_11 october 1985 ]
em
private pilot’s license 2003
Polychrome SPSU Student Work Publication Community Center Published
grew up in cairo, georgia flight training 2001
Florida United Business Ass. Office Duties 2004-2005
Bainbridge College General Studies 2004-2006
[r
o
d
tile mason’s assistant with my father (summers)
n
e
[5]
e
l
Cairo High School college + tech prep diploma 2004
2nd Year Design Competition Second Place_Stool Design 2008 (with Jereme + Jeremy Smith)
1st Year Design Competition First Place_Community Center Design 2007 American Eagle Outfitters Sales Associate 2006-2010 (Seasonally)
Southern Polytechnic State University Architecture 2006-2011
y b
Lew Oliver, Inc. Architecture Internship 2007-2008
l]
3rd Year Design Competition Second Place_Transit Hub Design 2009 Lighting Design Competition First Place_Fixture Design 2008 (with Kyle Hoard)
4th Year Design Competition First Place_High Rise Design 2009 Youth Architects Forum Fall Salon Exhibition 2009 Youth Architects Forum Summer Salon Exhibition 2009
Design Communication Association 2010 Exhibition Suburban SpatialityExhibited/Shortlisted Light Fixture Published (Prof. Robert Tango) Polychrome SPSU Student Work Publication Published
Southern Polytechnic State University graduated b.arch magna cum laude 2011 DVA Architecture Project Designer 2011-
?
4th Year Design Competition First Place_High Rise Design 2009 Youth Architects Forum Summer Salon Exhibition 2010
AIA South Atlantic Regional Convention Nature Center Design Exhibited by Liz Martin 2008
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
Thesis Competition First Place Faculty Choice Award Student Choice Award 2011
[6]
[7]
My design philosophy and approach revolves around several core principles. The first is a constant focus on how each intervention improves the condition upon which it intervenes. Furthermore, a rigorous self-criticality challenges architecture’s potential. I have a deeply-rooted belief in the ability of architecture to address emergent contemporary issues (psychological, social, ecological, environmental, et cetera) and it is my belief that a sensibility to these issues is an inherent responsibility to all architects.
[c o n t e n t s]
[thesis capstone project] 2011 first place faculty choice award student choice award
[northside drive community nexus] 2010
[inman park transit hub] 2009 second place_design competition
what
Good c a n /a r c h i t e c t u r e \ Harm
do?
[ivan allen mixed use high rise] 2009 first place_design competition
[writing sample(s)] Non-Place and the Alienation of the Hypermodern Subject_Architecture Theory Restoring the Collective Rights to the City through Social Agency_Thesis Research
[ professional work_dva arch.] Galaxy Cinemas Austin, Texas
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[8]
[ t h e s i s [first
[9]
c a p s t o n e
place (best
p r o j e c t _ s p r i n g
thesis)/ faculty
choice
award / student
2 0 1 1 ] choice
award]
[
This thesis investigation emerged from an initial interest in the notion of passivity as engendered architecturally within the global spaces of flows. These spaces constitute the modern subjects comprehensive environment, imposing, fabricating, and constructing meaning and use for the modern subject, rendering him or her passive to the forces of consumption and neo-liberalism. Because the airport is the quintessential example of this spatiality and the need for a metro-Atlanta satellite airport clearly exists, this program was chosen as a test-bed for the investigation. The investigation begins by understanding, firstly, how the modern subject generates space, intersubjectivity and meaning. In turn, how are these processes problematized within neoliberal space on the urban and subjective scale. Finally, how can architecture afford a subversion, allowing the subject to exercise agency in the urban environment. And what are the implications of releasing agency into a hyperprogrammed system such as the neo-liberal city?
restoring the collective rights to the city through social agency
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
]
[ 10 ]
“the right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources:
[body as a generator of space, use , and meaning]
it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.
It is, moreover, a common rather than individual right since the transformation inevitably depends on the exercise of collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization.�--David Harvey
[ 11 ]
[constructed reality]
[reality] The initial research for this investigation focused on understanding how we, as subjects generate our physical, social, and spatial environment through movement. Furthermore, how do these neurological processes generate intersubjectivity, as posited through the phenomenological discourses of Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Derrida. Both critics of spatial hyper-rationalization inform contemporary issues of subjective passivity and agency. These issues are rendered architectural primarily through the lens of the French Situationists, Bernard Tschumi, and David Harvey. Utilizing the subversive methods described within their discourses, I was able to find new methods of radically seeing and using space at the tactile level of the city. The psychogeographical maps of my site to the immediate left and right display new ways of generating space that operate outside of the armatures of consumerism and neo-liberal space. These maps were generated from walking the site and its immediate environs whilst taking photographs and recording a stream-of-consciousness. The resultant gestures spatialize the sensual experience of the site as problematized through the aforementioned contemporary issues.
“although self-propelled, the locomotive’s path is determined within strict boundaries...the subject’s freedom of movement is restricted by the instrumentalized image of the city, propagated under the reign of capital.”--Guy Debord
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[thesis capstone project]
can architecture and urbanism problematize the relationship between the subject and his or her physcial, social, and urban environment by enabling collective agency to indefinitely alter the city? and what physcial, social, and psychological implications attend such radical methods of seeing and using urban space?
[ 12 ]
[site
[ 13 ]
[ s t r u c t u r e d a m b i g u i t y _ a m o d e l f o r u r b a n d e v e l o p m e n t]
context]
The site context is wrought with social, historical, and physcial irregularity. Because it remains completely unstructured and disperate and constantly mediated, this strength to Atlanta’s Chinatown is untapped. Can these ambiguities can be structured but allowed to fluourish? The next phase of the design process involves answering the
how do we design for generative spatial meaning and use? Utilizing paradoxical question:
a medium of modularity because of its more democratic configurational properties, I sought to create a system of urban organization that transcends the contemporary dialectic of rational planning (the Manhattan Grid) vs. neo-liberal entropy (suburban hierarchial systems). Utilizing the strengths of
both, I developed a trialectic of local mutations. As such, global connectivity is achieved through strategic connections to the global systems of movement while local mutations ensure a system of structured irregularity. This urban system is always changing and receives meaning according to local needs rather than imposing meaning. The ensuing design process will utilize these principles to ensure that the resultant urban system remains globally integrated while locally mutatable. Finally, how can these local conditions interface to those that are global: namely, the urban system and the airport program, both of which demand their own logic and stability?
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[thesis capstone project]
[design methodology]
[ 14 ]
[s i t e
+
p r o g r a m ]
[process]
The typically insular and autonomous airport program is analagous to the coiled wire. Logically unwinding this program, I began to shape it according to local site conditions such that the airport becomes synthesizied into rather than autonomous from local site condidtions. The first iterations and gestural studies resolved the complex issue of designing for possibility, or, put in terms of the investigation, structuring ambiguity. As such utilizing long forgotten site lines from the 2,000-bed Lawson Memorial VA Hospital, I developed an ordering system that is easily mutable in order to: create connection across the site that tie into the urban structural system; create fluidity within the site; easily accept program; and interface to the airport program. This fluid spatialplay with the aforementioned historical diagram exposes and utilizes this history.
[ 15 ]
20 degrees
[thesis capstone project]
airport program
urban circulation
programmatic topography
surface
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ 16 ]
consulate spaces
terminal
parks + farming community services tarmac
ground services baggage handling commmercial
arrival and pickup baggage claim
chamblee-tucker rd.
[ i n t e r f a c e ]
[process]
Developing the previous ideas architecturally, the following studies attempt to resolve the interface between the two diametrically opposed programs: the airport (globally connected/locally diconnected) and community programs (globally disconnected/locally continuous). Utilizing this interface, I am able to expose the reality of Atlanta as opposed to the typically fabricated reality (Georgia Aquarium, World of Coke, Centennial Park, Mall of Georgia, et cetera). These high-consumerist meccas tend to operate unto a logic external to the real inner-workings of a given city. Moreover, this airport program demands passivity and reluctance to agency. How can this interface dislodge the passive subject and engage him or her, as the Situationists hinted throughout their discourses? This radical interface and juxtoposition of community programs to the airport program provides that opportunity for engagement and at least temporary dislodgement from Castells spaces of flow.
[ 17 ]
terminal metro
check-in
community spaces
parks + farming
community spaces
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[thesis capstone project]
check-in
consulate
[ 18 ]
[emergent development practice]
c o m
[ 19 ]
m
[process]
e r c i a l
1
[recreation fields]
This image was taken at a nearby abandoned lot that locals have repurposed as several soccer fields.
2
Staging the surface as infrastructure provides both a socially and evironmentally remediatory use to this typically exploitable unit of space. This ties the airport into larger ecological systems disolving its spatial, economic, and social autonomy.
3
Transgressing neo-liberal space: The next design move seeks to utilize Tschumi’s notion of transgression (Factory 798, Architecture and Disjunction). Rather than destroying and replacing an existing system of development, space and use, this architecture seeks to transgress: exist in juxtoposition creating mutable and emergent relationships. This explains the detachment from ground plane, which is always succeptible to neo-liberal reclaimation.
3
4
After the water has been properly and naturally treated, resevoir storage makes it publicly accessilbe and safe for recreation, evidenced by this example in Boulder, Colorado.
s
i
n
[bioswales]
These vegetative trenches direct and clean runoff water from the areas north of the site to prevent soil erosion and the percolation of runoff toxins into the soil and water table.
Artificial wetlands are an ecologically supportive waste management solution for both gray- and black-water filtration from the airports’ discharge.
oc
al
cr
ee
ks
]
ho us in g u
4
A Georgia native species, indiangrass grows naturally with as little as two hours of sunlight per day and prevents site erosion.
[runoff reservoir]
[peac
o
[indiangrass]
[constructed wetlands]
5 5
[l
h
2
g
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
htree
creek
]
to c hatt
aho
och
ee r ive
r >
[thesis capstone project]
1
Having developed the notion of interface, utilizing a common space between the global spaces of flow and the local spaces of community use, the next task involved resolving how this type of environment is self-sustaining and the manner in which it responds to local, rather than market, needs.
[ 20 ]
pier 1 op
pier 3
ty p ie r
comm unity
ne w pr
conference center
com mu ni
reversible auditorium
pe ac ht
re e
ro ad
theatre lobby
2
unity comm
outdoor amphitheatre
chamblee-dunwoody road
os
ed
m
ar
ta
exhibition spaces
(m
et
ro
)
ra i
public event space
l
pickup/dropoff
marta (metro) station
main terminal
ticketing/checkin
[section on pp 45-46]
airp
ort
ent
ry r oa
d
baggage claim
commerce
tarmac
security checkpoint main terminal
[main level]
[ 21 ]
airport
ground support
[ g ro u n d p l a n ]
peachtree-dekalb [existing]
p lan]
[section below]
[s i t e
chamblee-tucker road
[consulate spaces]
[ticketing/check-in]
[community use spaces]
These drawings begin to express the complex programmatic relationships that emerge from this scheme. The developed site section below describes an interface between community and airport terminal spaces. The plans and building detail above and left (respectively) corroborate these ideas architecturally as well. The idea that these community spaces are infinitely mutable is made graspable by Lite Steel technology. These beams which easily span the 17-foot required are easily moveable by one man and easily constructed using the saddle-brackets that hang on the super-structure. In this way, urban development is able to quickly and efficiently adapt to local needs. Additionally, this grassrooots type of development requires the permantent presense of an architectural staff, to direct and interpret the needs of the community into a built response.
[ o r t h o g r a p h i c s ]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[thesis capstone project]
[main terminal space]
[ 22 ]
[e x t e r i o r
[a i r p o r t
cladding]
superstructure]
[main
airport
level]
[community
piers]
[ground
[ a i r p o r t [ 23 ]
a r r i v a l ]
plane]
reversible theatre exhibition spaces arrival/check-in baggage claim MARTA metro station commcercial spaces
conference center plaza outdoor amphitheatre arrival/dropoff area bioswales run-off resevoirs marketspaces
airport tarmac
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[thesis capstone project]
steel tube box truss
[ 24 ]
[urban
[ 25 ]
mutability]
The rendered collages to the right express this interface from the vantage point of a passenger. The top right rendering is taken just off of the arrival/check-in area, overlooking the public event space. The rendering below is near the security checkpoint where community structures move parallel to the terminal. The idea is that the opportunity to engage these local urban conditions and dislodge one’s self--even momentarily--from the globally passive spaces of flow, is radical in that the global citizen is presented ‘face-to-face’ (literally) to urban realities outside of the consumeristically constructed realities of tourist districts, shopping malls, convention centers, et cetera.
[terminal section]
[ + f i v e
[ + t e n
y e a r s ]
y e a r s ]
[
a
i
r
p
o
r
t
i
n
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
t
e
r
f
a
c
e
]
[thesis capstone project]
This series begins to explain the two key components to this proposal and investigation: How does one interface the locally generative community condition to a more globally connected airport condition? And what implications arise from such a radical juxtaposition? Expressed in the section perspective series to the left is this interface at the MARTA metro station and airport arrival + check-in area. The drawing continues to describe how this system is able to adapt to future needs. Perhaps the superstructure is built up in ten years and completely abandoned ten years later (only to be re-purposed at a future time). The main concept is this structures ability to adapt to the reoccurring market crises that are inherent to neo-liberal development practice.
[ 26 ]
[urban
[ 27 ]
mutability]
The other issue addressed in this rendering series is that of the interface of global space (the airport--left) and local space (community spaces-right). This interface allows for a generation of intersubjectivity whereas subjects begin to engage each other across the lines of the consumerist space and public space. This opportunity to dislodge one’s self from this passive spatiality is definitive to this investigation.
[concourse section]
[ + f i v e
y e a r s ]
[ c o m m u n i t y
i n t e r f a c e ]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[thesis capstone project]
This series begins to speak to the root of the origional ideas--overcoming social passivity through an architecture of social agency. For the community members, these spaces are of a certain feasible constructibility that is easily actuated by the community (with the design and strategic leadership co-operation of a community-dedicated team of architects). The superstructure can be infilled, or disassembled according to current needs. This collaging of uses, a few steps farther than the typical urban street section of classically urban environments, creates a texture of urbanity. Whereas typical development is slow to respond to local needs and therefore attempts to organize them, this type of urbanity is able to bear the odd juxtaposition of uses that the local conditions require while maintaining a consistent global structure and relationship to the urban structure within which it is situated.
[ 28 ]
[ c o n c l u s i o n s ]
[ 29 ]
Imagining such a violent (Tchumi’s violence) juxtoposition of spaces, do they really dislodge “even the most conservative elements in society?� Taking the slice of the site from the previous page, we can imagine this violent juxtaposition and its implications upon the subjects that utilize either side of the mutable barrier. Globally passive travellors are now faced with day-to-day local issues literall in-the-flesh. This interface, operable from both sides, allows users to determine the amount of which this exposure occurs. Local and global collapse onto each other, generating a mutated condition through which both subjects are forced to accept the other, providing for a temporary dislodgement.
Utilizing the airport as a test-bed arose primarily from the investigation of the nonplace. However, according to these conclusions, it not only is the most blatant example of this problem, but possesses the most blatent potentiality of the solution. As such, a constant presense of global to local ensures the possibilty of a new paradigm of urban thought, use, and design.
[ e x p e r i e n c e d
i n t e r f a c e ]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[thesis capstone project]
I shall return now to this passive and pre-programmed hyper-modern subject--hypothesized, theorized, and abstracted by countless thinkers in countless discourses. What does this investigation and the spaces that it has yielded mean to the center of this study?
[ 30 ]
[ f a l l
[ 31 ]
s e m e s t e r _ f i f t h
y e a r ]
This project emerged fom several very complex and interrelated issues. The initial provocation was the extent to which landscape and architecture can develop a synthetic relationship and the emergent continuity that arises from such a thought and design process. Breaking this issue down further, I sought to resolve the idea of sustainability and its asscoiated ambiguity and contemporary contradictions in modern praxis. We were tasked to begin the investigation by identifying a monster, or the main issue plaguing the site--moreover, contemporary practice. After visiting the site, exploring its socio-spatial dimensions through physcial models and conceptual drawings, I centered my investigation on the idea of neo-liberal development models. More specifically, it was the way in which decisions are made fromt he financial institutionsbased upon a given developments’ potential for capital gain, or profit. These decisions, as witnessed adjacent to the site in Vine City, can have devastating consequences. This advancing development front acquires properties implants profitable (but not necessarily beneficial) development. As adjacent properties either rot away or leech onto the developments, property values decline clearing the way for them to be purchased and converted to more profitable use. Therefore, I tasked myself with re-thinking development practice as a grassroots endeavor that both involves and function to support the communities that it affects.
[hybrid-scapes_ northside dr. atlanta ] r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ 32 ]
development gesture study
socio-spatial divisions study
grassroots development study
macro
gestural
study
Initial efforts involved dealing with the on-site landfill that was recently taken off of the Environmental Protection Agency’s national registry of polluted brown-field sites. Plasma arc gasification methods offer considerable promise for dealing with toxic materials on site. Gasification chambers that move from the west side of the site to its east side gasify all types of waste producing clean municipal gas and energy. Once at the east end of the site, they function to take in municipal waste from the City of Atlanta and sell the energy back to the city. This public co-dependence produces economic sustainability for the site’s operations. As such, the emergent development can fund itself and operate outside of the neo-liberal development complex. The resale of excess natural gas back to the City of Atlanta funds further operations and expansion. Essentially, the the metropolitan area buys back its garbage and in turn funds expansion. The leftover piers from the initial gasification efforts are then retrofitted to house more permanent community functions while the interstitial property is divided in a linear fashion, much like notions of eastern european property demarcation. Property divided in this way is resistent to future buyouts and reversion to market development. This spatial defense produces slices of community use that are not easily accumulated according to typical neo-liberal development. These fragments also reconnect this the east/west urban tissue that has been lacerated by the mega-scaled developments to the north and south of the site, problematizing the segregated nature of Atlanta’s urban fabric.
[ 33 ]
[ hybrid-scapes_northside dr ]
[initial
concepts]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ 34 ]
[spatial explorations]
[community
wetlands]
[northside drive interface]
[site [ 35 ]
section
studies]
Current notions of private property are not necessarily amenable to this exploration. Therefore, implied here is a new social organizational paradigm whereby property is community-owned and operated to serve its needs. These units, located along the movement paths, are occupied by community members. This occupation implies notions of adverse ownership, successfully precedented in urban Islamic societies (Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case of the Muslim City) and U.S. court precedent (Halsey vs. Humble Oil and Refining Co, 1993; Ramapo Manufacturing vs. Mape, 1915; Marengo Cave Company vs. Ross, 1937). Additionally, a community congress shall be instituted to act as both a front to future development for these marginalized communities and also a democratically governing body through which these decisions regarding macro expansion and local occupation can be fleshed out.
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ hybrid-scapes_northside dr ]
Continuing the themes from previous explorations, these spatial studies focused on creating generative interaction among the subjects, programs, and social issues. Therefore, rather than normatively blocking out program on a site, the program here is fragmented in a linear way such that it can become heterogeneous across the site. The programs include artificial wetlands (to provide recycled clean water to urban gardens in the public spaces), parking (for World Congress Center events), composting operations (to recycle waste into useful soil for urban farming operations), public park spaces, and public units that can be occupied for community needs such as urban farms, habitation, artistic expression, et cetera. After gasification operations have ceased, the piers are to be converted market spaces, educational spaces, commercial spaces (subsidized by micro-loans in order to ensure local demand is prioritized over market demand), and subsizized housing.
[ 36 ]
[2_market space piers]
[1_community use piers]
[ s i t e s e c t i o n s t u d i e s] With such rigid linearity imposed within this new fragmented spatial strategy, condending with lateral (north/south) movement becomes a formidable challenge. This sectional study depicts the movementfrom pier to pier and the social agency involved with that movement. City grids tend to be ontologically and spatially rigid--imposed by urban planners and altered only with significant physical, political, economic resources. For this reason, citizens merely move along and within these structures of movement. However, movement between the piers utilizes deployable connections (constructed by several people in a relatively short amount of time). This affords the local citizenry the agency to alter their structures of movements to suit local needs and use. Furthermore, the sectional study begins to imagine how these fragmented linear structures speak with each other, spatializing the diagram to the right. Although usage, per Bernard Tschumi, is rather ambiguous and always in a state of ontological becoming (never imposed upon the users but always open-ended), the architecture that is created can suggest use in a a radically ambiguous manner. As such citizens posess the agency to utilize these spaces in a manner appropriate to current needs. And this exploration begins to suggest possible uses within this new type of organizational structure. Each pier--a remnant of the gasification process that de-toxified the site--recieves more rigid programs. These programs include community-use spaces (community congress offices, classroom space, gasification support spaces, commercial spaces, housing, et cetera). The interstitial piers, constructed of concrete and from leftover slag (produced during gasification), receive program and use from the community although they afford urban farming, park spaces, and many other uses. The market spaces (diagram_left) have outdoor expansion/flexible use spaces in order to accommodate larger events.
[1] [community / residential pier] [ 37 ]
[movement pier]
section]
[2] [park
spaces]
[movement pier]
[market
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
space
pier]
[ hybrid-scapes_northside dr ]
[site
[ 38 ]
The plans below and renderings above begin to suggest the potentiality and possibility that these linear pathways afford. Furthermore, the plans depict at a finite scale the heterogeneity and generative capability of such a spatial strategy of property demarcation and use. Shown in green are the movement structures, which, as can be seen on the site plane, tie into the existing downtown and Vine City/English Avenue street grids, restitging the urban laceration created by the railway and World Congress Center infrastructure. This connectivity, however, is meaningless unless program is superimposed upon it. Therefore, to secure these structures of moevement on the global scale, they are not programmed to receive finite programs. Rather, they are structured for movement with units for occupation and use alongside, creating a lively environment for moving through the site. As such, citizens may occupy and use these units in ways that enrich and answer the needs of the community such that they “neither [harm] nor cause harm� to their neighbors (Akbars). This concept of property possession and responsibility, extracted from Akbars’ Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case for the Muslim City, requires and affords new social relationships that operate outside of neoliberal structures of social relations. These more meaningful and relationships based on inter-community solidarity will insist upon a new society based on community needs and continuity. We were charged during the design process to abstractly define these new methods of possession both in contract form and architectural rendering. The excerpt
adverse possession
to the right elaborates more clearly this notion of while the plans below express these ideas architecturally.
[
[ 39 ]
generative
notions
of
property
and
use
]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ hybrid-scapes_northside dr ]
_adverse possession In a concerted effort to operate independently of normative development practices which emphasize an exploitation of space for individual gain, ownership policies of vending units, marketplace units, gardening units, single occupancy residencies, et cetera shall henceforth be utilized according to the terms of adverse possession. As explained in [section 01], this system of ownership is based upon the premise that one acquires possession of certain units through the use and meaningful cultivation of said units towards the larger needs of the community. Utilizing the units in such a way, the owner--the communities (via the Atlanta Community Congress)--shall legally ignore its use for a certain interval of time, rendering the unit in possession of those cultivating it. In the event that cultviation operates counter-intuitively to the values set forth in the introduction (either harming one’s neighbor(s) or causing harm to one’s neighbor(s), unit possessors will be acted upon and evicted from use. Additionally, this possession occurs specividally at a point that the possessor begins cultivating the site to his or her intended use and through public notification. This is corroborated by adjacent unit possessors and presented as a public communication of intent to the Atlanta Community Congress.
[ 40 ]
[ s p r i n g [second
[ 41 ]
s e m e s t e r _ t h i r d
place]
y e a r ]
This project seeks to synthesize many complex issues that exist both local to the site and systemmatic to its social context. The site, located along the Beltline--an abandoned system of railroad tracks around the city of Atlanta to be converted to park spaces--in Inman Park, was plagued by several contradictions. While preservations efforts on the west side of the site attempt to preserve the historic Fourth Ward district, gentrification along the east side of the site renders the actual site a middle ground, or third space, inhabited primarily by a thriving squatter population marginalized into this spatiality. As such, I approached this conditionas an opportunity to articulate a space that is neutral to both conditions, allowing all communities to cultivate the site through urban farming and market spaces, and ecological restoration and preservation. These central issues to an idea of cohesive community bind the three socially-opposed groups.
[i n m a n
p a r k
t r a n s i t
h u b _ a t l a n t a , g a]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ 42 ]
beltline skate park exposed asphalt surface freedom parkway squatter settlements old fourth ward site inman park mixed use development north highland road
[ 43 ]
[ c o n t e x t
+
r e s p o n s e ]
In an effort to instill cohesion, property lines from the Old Fourth Ward district to the west of the site were extended to create community gardens and modulate the geometry of the transit hub and flexible use spaces. Furthermore, lines from the mixed use developments to the east of the site in Inman Park were extended into the site. Socio-cultural artifacts such as the kudzu fields (a species with untapped latent benefits) and the skatepark (built by the local community) were preserved and emphasized. These flexible use spaces accommodate marketspace and open-ended surface/spatial conditions upon which the marginalized squatter population may utilize. An emphasis on the idea of community land enforces cohesion and de-emphasizes exclusionary tendencies already in place surrounding the site.
[mixed use]
[transit hub]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[inman park transit hub]
Initial gestures explored the relationship between the previously stated communities. The primary strategies consisted of empowering the marginalized communites whilst including the more affluent Inman Park community. Exploring spatial strategies which meaningfully restitch these atomized communities, the transit hub exposes this strategy and experience to the regional area.
[ 44 ]
[section_transit hub offices + ticketing]
[sectional
[section_community flexible use spaces]
[ 45 ]
development]
[inman park transit hub]
A strong emphasis on sectional development at various scalar dimensions facilitated the articulation of these various and opposing spatial conditions. These section studies allowed me to more fluidly negotiate the spatial relationships between the Old Fourth Ward, forthcoming Beltline, and Inman Park at a more tactile level than masterplanning techniques afford. As such, I was able to deal with notions of interface, sustainability, and program at an experiential level. We were urged, early on, to develop sectional strategies that pushed notions of sustainability and construction beyond their normative conceptions. As the Beltline consists of a string of abandoned railroad tracks and industrial facilities, the recycling of building refuse as aggregate alleviates the need of resources. Furthermore, elevating the program above the existing brownfield site facilitates the utilization of clean filtered water (from rooftop gardens and elevated wetlands) to slowly flush contaminates through the soil and aquifer at safe levels.
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ 46 ]
[freedom
parkway
bridge
_
pedestrian
crossing
_
view
northeast]
One common factor that both unites these three disparate communities and is inherent to postindustrial brownfield sites is environmental justice. Visible evidence of battery dumping and railway toxicity presents severe ecological implications to any development on the site. This problem is also an opportunity for defining new understandings of overused terms such as sustainability and nature. The macro-level understanding of this site and subsequent intervention understand its place ecologically on both the local and regional level. As such, community gardens, kudzu fields, natural grasses, and a forest micro-systems begin to incubate and foster a new ecological system that sustains itself. Elevated wetlands and the trees-atlanta coop both foster wildlife chains that occur naturally and are self-sustaining. These elevated wetlands also perform rain-/gray- water filtration, which flushes brownfiled toxins at an acceptable rate out of the soil. A new public space emerges in which community citizens may actively engage this system and take part in nurturing it in a non-exploitive way. Community gardens also foster new social relationships of production and exchange which operate external to the exploitative market relationships which are always other-ed to its consumers.
[market
[ 47 ]
spaces
and
waiting
platform
from
bike
path_view
north]
[ e c o l o g i c a l
two
_
community
use
center
hub
bike
path
_
view
southest]
s t r a t e g i e s ] [view
to
transit
from
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
above
_
view
south]
[inman park transit hub]
[phase
[ 48 ]
[ f a l l [first
[ 49 ]
s e m e s t e r _ f o u r t h
place]
y e a r ]
This project presents several dynamic contradictions regarding program, location, use, and inhabitation. Sited along a developing corridor into Atlanta’s central business district, adjacent to low-income housing, several homeless shelters, and an emerging tourist district, the idea of who such a highrise could be built for, is used by, and benefits becomes very important. Or is this typology a contradiction in itself, considering the issues plaguing this area. Accepting the premise of this typology, I chose to interrogate it rigorously through questioning its logic and typological expectations. As such, the resulting scheme address all factions of its context, utilizing these contradictions as an opportunity expose societal issues. Making public the ground plane, implementing much-needed low-income housing and single-occupancy-residency units, and facing the Pemberton Place spectacle to a resident-subsidized public-health clinic are the main methods of typological subversion.
[ i v a n
a l l e n
m i x e d
u s e
h i g h
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r i s e ] [ 50 ]
[process]
Not only does this investigation seek to expose current realities; also inherent to this spatial exploration is the exposing of socio-historical remnants long forgotten from the neo-liberal reinventing of properties. Utilizing Sanborn maps, which expose the nature of this low-lying area--typically, in Atlanta, where impoverished demographics were relegated--I began developing a system of manipulation that exposed the histories and their associated implications. Office and high-end residential programs are located to the east of the site adjacent to the central business district. Housing and public spaces work their way down to the western end of the site facing the dichotomous Pemberton Place and Atlanta Union Mission. Once these programs are established, they are then collapsed upon each other, generating new spatial-social-programmatic relationships. In this way, the typically autonomous and insular high-rise block is spatially and programmatically interrogated by actual site conditions and becomes an extension and reflection of them.
[ 51 ]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ ivan allen mixed use high rise]
Initial three-dimensional explorations investigated a deconstruction of the high-rise typology. Exploring what constitutes this typology and what implications and opportunities emerge when it is contextualized and made public. The initial response to the site conditions (model_far left) revealed a dichotomy to this site. To the north where lowincome housing and homeless support facilities dominate, all realities are exposed in their raw form: infrastructure, homelessness, poverty, et cetera. To the south, where the Ivan Allen development and Pemberton Place tourist spectacle is in full swing, consumeristic realities are created and propagated concealing their byproducts: the societal refuse witnessed to the north of the site. As such, how can this development begin to expose these conditions dislodging the passive consumer from his or her activities. Moreover, how can this typically insular and autonomous typology be cracked open to receive its context?
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These representations exhibit the extent to which this outdated typology has been deconstructed, reconstituted, and taken apart. Floor-plate configurations are broken and staggered in order to create a dialogue from floor to floor with vertical atria. This language is continued into the facade language, where facades communicate interior disruptions, effectively distorting this building ‘lobotomy’ that Koolhaas describes in Delerious New York. Programs are not vertically compartmentalized into the hyper-rational components. Programs interact with each other, creating emergent programmatic and social relationships. The public-housing plaza that interjects the office/reseidential portion of the east towers is a socially-minded answer to the elitist upper plaza of the W-Hotel accross the Williams Street to the East. The interjection of program, driven by historical and site force and carried out through formal and spatial articulation is the main driver behind this design scheme.v
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[ ivan allen mixed use high rise]
[p l a n s + s e c t i o n s]
[ 54 ]
[southwest
plaza]
community public spaces
[ 55 ]
] street williams from south view [
williams street]
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
view
east
from
ivan
allen
]
[ ivan allen mixed use high rise]
[from
[office spaces from core] [
[ 56 ]
jaques
[ 57 ]
tati:
playtime
(1967)
[ s e l e c t e d
w r i t i n g
s a m p l e s ]
These writing examples seek to express a level of thought geared not only towards understanding the underpinnings and of design, but also towards understanding how we, as subjects either individually, or collectively think about and use space. Furthermore, beyond designing space, writing and thinking spatially and about space, exposes the hidden layers of architecture and urbanism. This process allows the designer to explore the larger spatial implications of architecture and urbanism: namely, their psychological, sociological, physcial, programmatic effects. This much neglected part of architecture allows better informed decisions during the more ‘hands-on’ design process. As such, it is my contention that designers cannot separate themsleves from past and contemporary discourses lest architecture be reduced to visual and consumeristic trends.
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[ 58 ]
[NON-PLACE AND THE ALIENATION OF THE HYPERMODERN SUBJECT] This exerpt from a theoretical investigation into the architectural roots and premises of passivity outlines the late evolution of the current phenomenon of non-place, as posited by Marc Auge and investigated in this paper. This investigation subsequently assisted in the formulation of future thesis research and my own architectural stances.
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r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
writings]
Evolving into the contemporary condition, spatial and temporal issues have become even more exacerbated. New anxieties and crises of identity are emerging for the contemporary subject, mutating his alienation to yet another autonomous form. Augé terms the modernity of excess as supermodernity. He problematized anthropological place in the contemporary world because of its ”accelerated transformations” (20). A succinct understanding of the emerging contradictions in contemporary anthropology can clarify the issues that one faces in studying current global trends.
Anthropological place indicates “places of identity, of relations, and of history” (Augé 43). Furthermore, it is defined as “a space and frontiers beyond which other men are defined as others, in relation with other centers and other spaces. It is on these terms that anthropologists are able to study societies and their interrelations. But these concrete terms are not amenable to current spatial and temporal understandings within supermodernity. Societies are transforming globally and are networked as such. With the momentum of these transformations of time and events comes the acceleration of history. Because of the age of instant information, we can nearly grasp all meaning from daily events from all perspectives through the heterotopic television screen. This condition leads to what Augé terms a “multiplication of events,” whereby a “density of events” convolutes meaning because of the “growing tangle and interdependencies in what some already call the “world system” (23). Beginning with the Modernists call to zeitgeist and a sudden anxiety about defining their own time, the problem has escalated to an “overinvestment of meaning” whereby the individual, with all of the invested information inundated upon him by the mass media strives to merely “give a meaning to the present” (Augé 23-4). The imagery overload immediately available to the individual numbs his/her senses to world events and simply creates a disinterested knowledge of the world system and its space—“we may not know [the implications of the events] but we recognize them” (Augé 26) Continuing the advances in transportational technology, supermodernity is marked by an abundance of space. With the advent of jet airline travel, the world is effectively shrunk to a temporal distance of 22 hours—the longest airline flight to date is Newark, NJ to Singapore operated by Al Nippon Airways. With every corner of the globe effectively available to the individual on the physical level in less than a day and technologically available to him/her through a simple internet search engine, what is witnessed is an abundance of space. Furthermore, with space travel and knowledge of the universe advancing exponentially with radio and infrared telescopes allowing us to see through time into the history of the known extents of space, the once infinite limits of our spatiality seem almost insignificant. Through cheap deregulated air travel and mass media proliferation, all places and geographies are immediately available. It seems immediately clear that the current supermodern condition can be characterized by “an image of excess” (Augé 24). Lipovetsky elaborates on the image of excess in what he terms in a synonymic way “hypermodernity” characterized by a “economic deregulation, scientific developments…with effects that are heavy with threats as well as promises, commercialization of lifestyles…and rampant individualism” (31). Or more succinctly, he categorizes it as “a second modernity, deregulated and globalized” (31). The excess that Lipovetsky notes is that of “consumption” bred of “[h]ypercapitalism” that further begets “hyperindividualism” (33). Note that these are all terms and tenets that describe [post]modernity indicating not so much a break from modernity but a societal mutation of it. “Nothing,” he warns, “is safe from the logic of the extreme” that pervades hypermodernity whereby anything that becomes mildly popular is immediately commercialized and exploited for maximum profit...
[selected
...In the convoluted transition from modernity to post-modernity, a change in production prompted a societal change. With evolving technology— particularly in the sectors of mass communication—spaces of production and consumption became sectored globally. Foucault states that the preeminent idea that carried on from modernity to post-modernity was the notion of “discipline,” which manifested itself differently in the two eras (can these be separated into two eras?) (Charles 3). The discipline of modernity strove in the spirit of efficiency and progress to create both “normalized and standardized behaviour…to train individuals and to force them into an identical mould so as to optimize their productive faculties” (Charles 3). Sébastien Charles notes that post-modernity reflects a post-disciplinary society that witnesses a blossoming of individuality. He credits and exemplifies this through fashion during the transitional period from modernity to post-modernity. Fashion is so important in noting this individualization of society because it crosses class borders in that it is “indissociable from competition between classes—between an aristocracy anxious to display its magnificence and a bourgeoisie eager to imitate it;” and as post-modernity pressed on, this notion trickled down to the middle to lower classes as well (Charles 4). In defiance against the disciplinarian societies that preceded, the postmodern subject strove to become autonomous of the collective whole and to “express a unique identity” (Charles 5). Henceforth, social norms were not constructed from the top down but organically formed by the individual (read: consumers). The authoritarian structures of [pre-] modernity have dissolved giving way to a system that emphasizes “private choice,” or the illusion thereof (Charles 7). By allowing for personalization, consumers can “either accept their identities or not” (7). Without a disciplinary framework to systematize life, the postmodern subject is free to represent his/her-self as they feel appropriate. However, it must be emphasized that witnessed here is an illusion of freedom. Although the subject is free of an authoritarian framework, he/she is subject now to consumerism. There exists during postmodernity a growing need to express individuality and through mass production (and consumption), this is possible. It is now the autonomy of the individual that is “celebrated” (9). These changes were tied almost exclusively to notions of mass production and consumption. Within the postmodern framework, there existed an individual that became even more autonomous from the collective through the ‘benefits’ of postmodernity—namely the proliferation of personalized goods— which lead to an individualization tied to and directed by the market.
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[RESTORING THE CITY
THE COLLECTIVE RIGHTS TO THROUGH SOCIAL AGENCY] I began my thesis investigation by formulating a clear understanding of how we, as individual and collective subjects cognize and utilize space on the architectural and urban scale. Subsequent research and analysis centered upon understanding how this spatial cognition is problematized within the spaces of consumption and neo-liberalism. The following exerpt is taken from the early investigation into subjective spatial cognition.
...The underpinnings of a discussion on the relationship between a subject and his or her external condition—or, environment—will be centered on the phenomenological discourses asserted by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the linguistic discourses of Jacques Derrida. Their findings describe a certain relationship between subject + environment and subject + subject. Once understood, these discourses will be placed in the context of architecture and elaborated in terms of their contribution to the understanding of how the contemporary subject apprehends his or her environment within the non-place. An emerging trend in these findings reveal a disjunction in the way that the subject can understand his environment physically, socially, historically, et cetera. There seems to be, since the intellectual over-rationality of the Enlightenment and economic over-rationality of the emerging global economies, an erosion of the individual’s ability to critically engage his social and physical environment. This of course, as demonstrated by Derrida, MerleauPonty, and other contemporary scholars such as Bernard Tschumi and Peter Eisenman, has dire political and social implications. The structure of the argument at present will be organized as such: we begin first with a discussion of how the individual processes neurologically his relationship to his perceived environment—both social and physical— as framed by Derrida and Merleau-Ponty; next, a discussion emerges centered upon how this relationship is problematized within the contemporary non-place; finally, the political and social implications of these new structures of perception will be discussed. And in closing, the issues will be placed within an appropriately architectural context. [rethinking perception + action] To begin to understand this subject/environment relationship that Merleau-Ponty and Derrida describe within their discourse, perhaps one should begin with the notions that they oppose. Within philosophical discourses, an opposition has emerged predominantly within the empiricists that frame the world as a series of objects that, at times, interact with each other. The individual, or subject, is merely understood as an object among objects. Therefore, we see a distinct opposition of subject/object whereby interaction between the two is purely reactionary. Neurological discourse operates predominantly within this understanding whereby the senses are reactionary. Examples of this can be understood diagrammatically as: seeing a color-->registering that color within the brain->and apprehending the color; or, hearing the voice-->apprehending its meaning-->and formulating an opinion or response to said meaning. This structure of perception, however does not account for the actual way by which the individual perceives his environment—through social or physical interaction. Merleau-Ponty argues that the relationship of subject/environment is more topological than oppositional. His understanding places the subject, or individual, within the milieu of objects constantly negotiating his relationship to them, rather than only reacting to them. He understands the body as “part of the perceived world” (171).
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In this structural framework, however, we must understand the body as the original source of meaning, an understanding that will be scaffolded by Derrida’s discussion of language and its evolution. Furthermore, the erosion of these perceptive faculties within the non-places (of consumption) and their social and political implications will be elaborated.
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
writings]
[acquiring meaning through social interaction] Jaques Derrida, within the discourses highlighted in Of Grammatology, discusses how through the evolution and rationalization of language in the written and spoken form, the ability to formulate and comprehend meaning and passion has been eroded, crippling, to an extent our ability to communicate which is further problematized in the technological advancements that further separate the signifier from the meaning that it signifies. Derrida identifies the voice, at the origin of language as the purest signifier of expression and passion. Therefore, the spoken word signifies not only the meaning intended but the emotional context in which the meaning is intended as well. Furthermore, the ontological state of meaning within a word is in a constant state of becoming. However, as societies form and advance, expanding spatially, a supplement was required to foster communication and the temporal storage of knowledge. This necessitated the formulation of written language (the aforementioned supplement). Previously within communication language created a direct relationship as such: spoken word-->meaning. Early written languages of the Chinese, Arabic, and Egyptians detailed a somewhat direct connection of character-->meaning. However the emergent phonetic languages of the colonizing West, eager to formulate a supplement that can be widely applicable to its expanding global markets (Derrida’s assertion) further distanced the signifier from the signified as such: written word(signifier)-->phonetic sound(signifier)-->word(signified)-->meaning. This rationalization of the supplement had reciprocal effects on the spoken languages of Western countries whereby Derrida mentions several times in Of Grammatology the French language, and presumably others, struggle to relate the emotion of pure spoken language through the extensive use of accents; however, over time syllables and sounds begin to be left out or slurred through such that the original passion and emotion of the pure vocal is lost. Society is left with the monotonous and a-communicational spoken language that is the result of its amendment to the phonetic written language that marks the bulk of communication...
[selected
Within his relationship, the interaction becomes fluid and inherently topological whereby the senses synthesize the subject into his or her environment. He asserts, further, that the “body generates space through action” indicating a critical relationship to the environment. Merleau-Ponty refutes reactionary discourses on movement and action through the study of perceptive anomalies observed in neurological study. For example, the commonly observed condition of anasognosio, whereby a subject refuses to accept the loss of an extremity indicates that the subject negotiates a body schema that extends into his or her environment and operates perceptually regardless of its physical condition. Furthermore, through the study of concrete movement (“the body projecting towards an object”) and abstract movement (movement initiated out of context), he has demonstrated that movement and perception are not necessarily reactionary. Perhaps a more abstracted explanation can be perception through movement. Merleau-Ponty observed subjects who could easily perform concrete movements such as reaching out to grab a pen but when asked to perform abstract movements such as touching one’s own nose, the subjects performed with great difficulty. This exposes, he asserts, synthetic nature of perception and action such that if we merely contemplated an action and then performed it as such, the subjects would not demonstrate such difficulty in performing actions out of context. Furthermore, this perceptual field, a synthesis of our perceptive sensibility, is centered upon the body. It is the body that Merleau-Ponty invests much importance in that it anchors the subject in his environment rather than placing it in opposition to it (and we should remember that the term environment implies social and physical relationships). Therefore, physically, when we see a distant landmark that appears to be at a height of mere inches, we do not have to contemplate its distance and perform a mental trigonomic calculation of its actual height. We synthetically comprehend perspective and can negotiate a fairly active perception of its actual height. Merleau-Ponty’s formulated these ideas based upon the discourses of Bergson, Marcel, and perhaps most importantly to this discussion, Sartre, who’s ontological dimension of the body describes most efficiently the individuals social, or subject-subject relationships. Sartre describes three ontological dimensions of the body that negotiates within its environment: 1. The Lived Body-whereby the subject exists in his or her body rendering the world an object; 2. The Body for Others-whereby the subject grasps others as objects constituting one’s own subjectivity; and finally, Alienation-whereby the gaze of the other constitutes one’s own objectivity in relation said other. The synthesis of this understanding describes a topological relationship of subjectivity. However, for Merleau-Ponty, this describes further a topological relationship of intersubjectivity, or, an intermingling of subject/object. These discussions of perception and action basically formulate the idea of a subject synthetically integrated into his or her physical and social environment instead of being empirically opposed to it. Therefore, he is constantly engaging it as such and, in the process, creating space out of these perceptual conceptions.
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[ p r a c t i c e _ d v a
a r c h i t e c t u r e ]
Upon, graduation in May, 2011, I was brought on as a project designer in DVA Architecture. Principals Mike Voetgle and Bill Davis started DVA, a relatively young firm after branching off from more corporate-oriented architecture firms. As a designer, I was quickly thrown into a various dearth of projects working at all levels: schematic design, design development, construction documents, and construction administration. Working in a small firm has allowed me to quickly gain a sense of the comprehensiveness of design. Voetgle and Davis seek an approach that employs design throughout all phases such that we never put our hypothectical pencils down. I am deeply indebted to DVA for offering me the rare opportunity to engage architecture in such a wholesome manner. It is my intention to utilize the pragmatic skills and knowledge gained through at DVA to enrich my graduate-level education. As such, I hope to return to DVA and close the loop by utilizing a higher education to further enrich their design principles.
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[ 64 ]
[galaxy cinemas] austin, texas DVA Architecture
[ 65 ]
This design involves a set of contradictory, yet challenging, conditions within which to operate. The client, eager to respectfully modernize-within a tight budget--the Austin vernacular, challenged us to provide a striking, yet regionally contextual formal and spatial strategy for the theater which will anchor the Trails at 620 development just outside of Austin, Texas. Working within these conditions, we sought to develop our design towards highlighting the spatial experience of cinema. Theatres, traditionally an urban event have recently been transformed into passive sub-urban mode of consumption--yeilding insightful spatial strategies to bombastic displays of kitsch. However, DVA has re-engaged this typology, revitalizing its importance to contemporary sub-urbal condition. Within the increasingly monotonous and alienating lifestyle of the sub-urban, cinemas offer a rare opportunity to see and be seen, as the adage goes. Additional programs such as in-theatre dining and a bar and lounge enriches potential opportunity for social interaction and co-mingling--an experience virtually abolished within suburban lifestyles.
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
[practice_reality ]
rendering by: tietong lu
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[practice_reality ]
rendering by: tietong lu
r. bell | design portfolio | issuu.com/designandcognition
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