wOlf’BlAnket
this project is the culmination of the efforts of: ien boodan janice chen & levi vanweerden
with contributions by: craig england
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re: andrew levitt arch 393 design studio “the inner studio” university of waterloo school of architecture cambridge, ontario fall/winter 2017
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cOntentS project brief 4,5
concept 6 ~ 11
process 12 ~ 19
wall assembly 20 ~ 29
images 30 ~ 37
bibliography 38
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Project BrieF Wolf’Blanket is a wall. Or rather, a wall assembly. Further, a perverted wall assembly. Wolf’Blanket is based off the typical wall assembly of interior partition walls, but, in the swapping of certain components with unconventional materials, asks the question: Do you know what’s behind your gypsum? Oftentimes, the “clean” appearance of finished drywall leads users to believe that their environment is “safe”; however, peeling off this layer can reveal improper construction techniques, unsanitary remnants from previous occupants, rodents and pests (dead and alive), among any other fathomable thing that can fit in between the gaps of a stud wall. Visually, the wall, on the side that receives more through-traffic, is intact and acts as a soft box or light box, providing soft diffused light to passersby. The wall on this side is meant to be nothing more than “pretty” and “not too distracting”. This side was furnished with tropical plants and sleek black tables and chairs, offering a place to chat with a friend, or simply take a selfie in flattering lighting. On the opposing side, structural elements are revealed (wood studs, gypsum, A/V barrier, etc) through a deliberately broken corner. This broken corner reveals that raw, bloody meat sandwiched between steel mesh.
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The smell of fried chicken is deliberately “inserted” in and around the wall assembly. This smell is universally* alluring, which distracts users from their preexisting biases of what smells are common to the site. The user is invited by the smell of delicious, cooked food, but is presented with a grotesque display of bloodied raw meat in searching for this smell’s origin. Playing off a wolf’s sense of smell, and its access to Truth through its elevated senses (in comparison to humans’), Wolf’Blanket presents a reality that is visually dissonant with the truth, and, depending on whether you are a wolf or a human, misleading, as well, in terms of smell. This installation comments on our dependency on visual information above all other ways of perceiving this material world. Futher, it comments on the ability for “pretty” or “beautiful” things to distract a viewer from the unsustainable truth that lies beyond a facade.
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ConcePt This project began with a discussion about the distinctive instinctual and/or conditioned behaviours of wolves (in the most general sense), and how these characteristics may relate to or emphasize certain nuances of human behaviour when the human interacts with some designed mass/void (“architecture”; or, “the installation”). Some of these distinctive characteristics included olfactory systems, social hierarchies (and their relationship to body language), the collection and distribution of food, as well as the role of the Wolf in its larger ecosystem. Wolves have a highly-sensitive sense of smell. As a result, smells are used as a medium to communicate information between wolves and between wolf packs. Urine is used to demarcate territory, and the act of smelling allows a wolf to identify this territory. [citation needed] The dependency on this elevated sense suggests that any transgressions, in terms of the territorial nature of wolves, carries greater consequences than other transgressions relating to other sensory devices, such as sight (body-language), sound (vocalizations), and touch (biting), which can carry multiple meanings. Signifiers of smell have an unequivocal clarity, equatable to that of signs humans use, that are unequivocal in terms of visual information that is being communicated.
7 Socially, wolves “elect” (or naturally assume) roles of leadership and dominance, and all other wolves in that respective pack relate to that “Alpha Wolf” in increasing levels of submissiveness, with the “Omega”, at the bottom of this hierarchy [citation needed]. A wolf’s hierarchical status can be identified by its body language: variations in posture, facial expressions, and positioning of the tail and ears, as well as accompanying vocalizations. [drawings needed]
Wolves in positions of higher statuses are responsible for ensuring appropriate practices of reproduction as well as assume responsibility for acquiring food for the rest of the pack. Lower-ranking wolves are fed first to ensure that all members of the pack are being accommodated. [citation needed] Various roles exists for specific ranks of wolves, but the important concept to note about this hierarchy is the idea that Wolves do not function as singular entities; there are no wolves without packs, and there are no packs without wolves. [The concept of the “Lone Wolf” was omitted from this discussion.] Wolves exists as a collective, in asymmetric harmony with themselves and the world they occupy. In terms of the relationship wolves have with their environments, it has been observed that wolves act as quasi-stewardesses of their respective ecosystems. [citation needed] The insertion of wolves into (geographically-appropriate) degrading ecosystems proved to return that ecosystem to a state of equilibrium. Wolves are aware of their populations and consequently reproduce at a rate in respect to an ecosystem’s current carrying capacity, despite wolves’ unawareness of the English language and terms like “ecosystem” and “carrying capacity”.
× In a separate, albeit parallel, discussion, the symbolic importance of the “blanket” was explored. We began by Google’ing its definition:
The characteristics of a blanket that carried significance to us were its material properties (of cloth; of draping softness) and its ability to contain warmth. Childlike and childhood uses of the blanket were mentioned: children like to hide under their blankets when scared, lending a sense of safety and security (An interesting linguistic footnote: The word “comforter” has a definition in the realm of bedding, as a thick type of blanket, from the French verb “to comfort”.) As adults who may or may not continue to exhibit this irrational behaviour, we further discussed the fallacies of blankets and any other “coverings”. Blankets do, in fact, have heat-insulating properties; however, what distinguishes blankets from all other material insulators is that they uniquely contain the heat
9 emitted from the human body in an effort to keep that body warm[er], that is, blankets give us a way to collect the energy we produce. Commonly found in domestic settings, blankets, understandably, have some association to the concept of safety in relation to heat, perhaps as some remnant of infantile experiences with the physical bodies of said infant and its maternal figure[s]. [citation needed, Freud] However, we argue that this sense of security is false. During situations of legitimate danger (when cortisol, the stress hormone, is released), our “fight or flight” instinct is activated [citation needed] A blanket, in this scenario, would limit mobility and visibility, subsequently endangering the subject further. Also, things covered by blankets become abstracted from the truth, in that their forms become ambiguous when wholly or partially concealed. For this reason, we concluded:
where the “Blanket” acts as a device of containment, protection, and abstraction, and “Trap” refers to a presentation of the world that is inconsistent with reality resulting in problematic consequences, including an initial false sense of security. ×
A Wolf;Blanket, then, is some object that communicates deceptive information visually, while simultaneously communicating unequivocal information through smell. The goal is to emphasize that a dependency and prioritization of a single sense beyond all other senses is problematic, and that a wealth of information is available to us, humans, if we are able to move towards a more holistic use of our bodies, as designers and as users. Design is dominated by the use of visuals, and understandably so, as the majority of the fundamental structures and systems in society are dominated by the use of visuals (written words, traffic signs, etc.) However, this does not excuse the exclusion or devaluing of other senses. Smell has an intrinsic connection to memory, and is often more reliable than any other sense in terms of triggering memory. Our experiences with touch are a result of our physical bodies interacting with and in the physical world. Sound, which was barely discussed throughout this project, is perceivable through more than our ears, and, if we define sound as oscillations of air particles, we then have the ability to “feel� these vibrations with other parts of our bodies. Ears just perceive vibrations with greater sensitivity. To reiterate, this projects attempts to implement further design parameters beyond sight (aesthetics, material, light) into a designed object, with the intent to trigger a designed event through the juxtaposition of visual information with olfactory information, in an
11 effort to emphasize the deficit of non-visual information in an industry (and society) that is dominated by visual information, despite humans’ tremendous capacity to retain information through other senses.
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prOceSs The design process of this project tells a story about the nature of architectural design, and how contemporary designers may knowingly and, within the parameters of this assignment, tactfully defy traditionally-undefiable rules in the realization of a built work. The “rule” we have “defied” is the moving of the site boundary. This only became a feasible solution to a set of building constraints once the designed idea was elevated to a height where all group members had a profound understanding of the designed thing in relation to its components and what those components represent in relation to the narrative being told. Because of this understanding, we were able to translate (or perhaps transpose) these components to tell the same story in a different way.
13 The initial designed thing was a freshly-killed fawn wrapped in a “blanket”, suspended from the ceiling by a rope, dripping with blood (as if recently caught in a snare). This was to be at the top of a fire stair preceded by a series of softbox/lightboxes of the same material as the “blanket” of the snare. This fire stair is the fastest and most-used stair from the ground floor of the School of Architecture to the undergraduate design studio. The stair was designed as a place of circulation (as opposed to a place of dwelling), and its circulation vector is clearly defined: a singular progression up a series of stairs to a landing that asks you to turn around to repeat that ascension five more times before arriving at a door. The opposite vector (of descending down the stairs) was neglected as we wanted to take advantage of the anticipatory nature of arriving to something as opposed to leaving from something which has already been known. The designed idea was to appropriate this rigid circulation vector in order to tell a story-- the story of the Wolf’Blanket. By conditioning users to grow accustomed to an environment of new pleasantness and then inverting this feeling with a sudden, theatrical display of gore, we were able to create a dynamic juxtaposition that further communicated our point. This dynamic juxtaposition is ephemeral, but it is real, and that is what is important. People will only be shocked for a moment before they unconsciously begin to rationalize what is in front of them, but that brief moment of surprise is where designed idea and designed thing intersect, operating at the core of this installation. It became quickly evident that it would be difficult to obtain a freshly-killed fawn, and efforts of faking the appearance of such proved
fruitless, as users would be close enough to investigate the reality of the situation, so the designed thing was further developed. × In an effort to bring the designed thing closer to the realm and language of architecture, the suspended fawn was replaced with another softbox/lightbox, except it would be in a state of disrepair, such that its interior components would be exposed, revealing some-thing with an equivalent effect to the fawn. Because we were already establishing a language with the preceding series of softboxes (that language being a series of walls; more specifically, walls of light), we decided to continue that language to include the “Grand Finale”, concluding that the moment of inversion, perversion, theatrics, and juxtaposition should, too, be some wall of the same stuff as the walls coming before it.
15 The designed idea and the designed thing were finished. In terms of the academic scope of this course, the ideas we were developing and communicating, and in terms of what was reasonable for the timeline of this assignment, there was little to no reason to expend more energy to move forward with design. It was time to build. × Upon submitting our idea to the health & safety officer of the school for approval to build, we were told that anything built in the fire stair had to comprised of non-combustible materials, except the wood, given that it was covered by a non-combustible material. We originally planned for the “blanket” of Wolf’Blanket to be of some natural material in an effort to maintain a language of Nature and natural materials. Cotton was affordable, it had the necessary translucency to diffuse light, it could be pulled taut without tearing, it looked natural, it was natural, except it was not noncombustible. We considered fiberglass cloth as an alternative, but it didn’t have the same properties of cotton cloth that were equally important to this installation. If we had to use cotton, we would have had to spray it with a fire retardant. The quantity of spray we would have needed would have been an additional expense that we weren’t willing to pay (and even if we were, it wouldn’t have shipped to us in time). In resolving the issue of fireproofing, issues of economy, time, and labour arose. The only solution was to change the site.
It seems like a strange solution: How do you resolve an issue that is fundamental to a site? You change the site, of course. At first we were hesitant, as there were few other places in the school that could accommodate the aforementioned progression, but we realized that the designed idea was what was actually “finished”, and the designed thing was just that designed idea manifested into the material world, operating in subjection to its motivating idea. This realization liberated us from the notion that the solution to our problem(s) was to move the designed thing to another site. We had to move the designed idea. And that designed idea was built upon: ▷ the appropriation of some alreadydefined circulation vector ▷ the insertion of visual and olfactory pleasantness along that vector, in the form of a built structure and the smell of fried chicken ▷ an inversion of that pleasantness at the end of that vector through a disrespectful display of flesh and blood These parameters were broad enough to be manifested on a myriad of sites, including the initial fire stair (which will henceforth be referred to as Site A). Site B was a wall in between the undergraduate studio kitchen and the nearby fridge, but was unelected as the chicken smell might be interpreted as originating from the kitchen, and not as some component of the installation.
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The final site, Site C, ended up being a void between two columns in the atrium of the building’s main entrance:
There were clear circulation vectors to ensure that we would sucessfully interrupt people’s daily lives. The designed thing would infill the void with a softbox; this would not interrupt circulation to any problematic extent, and the fact that the void was viewable from two sides meant that our designed thing would/ should have two sides, too. This two-sidedness provided us two planes to tell our story: one for condtioning, and, quite literally, the opposite plane to establish an inversion. The distillation of the designed thing to a single wall, after having established the finalized designed idea in the new site, ultimately allowed us to reach a point of equilibrium in terms of balancing solutions to the myriad of problems created throughout this design process. In actuality, changing the site did more than remove the need for fireproof/fireproofed materials; it dramatically reduced the amount of fabric and timber needed, and focused the designed thing to a singular thing, as opposed to a sequence of multiple things. Less is more.
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wAll aSSemBly The wall assembly mimicked a standard 2x4 or 2x6 stud wall, except we used 2x2 members to make the wall cavity as shallow as possible in order to minimize the amount of meat needed to fill it. Insulation was replaced with meat and fake blood, A/V barrier was replaced with vinyl flooring, and a steel mesh was added in between these two elements at the very last minute, because it was available and because it was free and because the industrial material contrasted nicely with the natural meat (it also helped keep the meat in place, and also resembled fishnet stockings for anyone interested in subliminal imagery).
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bibliography Wolf Reintroduction Changes Ecosystem by STAFF, June 21, 2011. National Park Trips Media. Accessed 18 October 2017. 1995 Reintroduction of Wolves in Yellowstone https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/ wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem
THE SILENT LANGUAGE OF WOLVES – BODY LANGUAGE Body Language cont’d from The Language of Wolves. © 2017 Living with Wolves. / 501c3 Non-Profit Organization https://www.livingwithwolves.org/body-language-of-wolves/
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