Exquisite Corpses: An Architectural Mystery

EXQUISITE CORPSES: AN ARCHITECTURAL MYSTERY

by Galo Canizares Bachelors of Environmental Design University of Colorado, 2010

Submitted to the Department of Architecture in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology February 2014 Š 2014 Galo Canizares. All rights reserved.

The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.

Signature of Author: ...........................................................................................................

Department of Architecture January 15, 2014 Certified by..........................................................................................................................

Arindam Dutta Associate Professor of Architectural History Thesis Supervisor Accepted by..........................................................................................................................

Takehiko Nagakura Chair of the Department Committee on Graduate Students

1

Thesis Committee Arindam Dutta Associate Professor of Architectural History Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sheila Kennedy, AIA Professor of the Practice of Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Technology William O’Brien Jr. Assistant Professor of Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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EXQUISITE CORPSES: AN ARCHITECTURAL MYSTERY

by Galo Canizares Submitted to the Department of Architecture on January 15, 2014 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Architecture Abstract In 1937, writing about the parallels between mystery fiction and urban dwelling, Walter Benjamin wrote, ““in times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator, everybody will be in the position of having to play detective.” That is to say that anxieties present within the built environment often lead to a series of actions closely related to those undertaken by detectives. Using this as a departure point, this project seeks to reconstitute a discussion of meaning within architecture through the use of narrative, anachronous formal languages, and literary devices. If we are to take the dismissal of postmodern architectural discussions as a given, we can place meaning as an archaic subject matter limited to autonomous formal readings (i.e. dialogues of surface, geometric complexity, etc) and non-existent in the context of large architectural production (i.e. real estate development, efficiency in construction methods, etc). However, revisiting linguistic analogies and a nostalgia for lost artifacts and pairing them alongside contemporary concerns of urban dwelling and architectural agency, we can re-establish culture-centric modes of architectural production (ones not limited to parametric or positivistic attitudes).

By embracing the fictional dimension of an architectural project, and exploring the limits of that fiction, Exquisite Corpses determines a more specific understanding of narrative architecture, one that does not dismiss or marginalize the subject matter but augments it. A fictional narrative suggests that contemporary discussions of meaning in architecture must be taken to certain limits in order to promote agitations, explore morals, and even mediate anxieties—much in the same way detective mysteries operate. While previous attempts at promoting these themes rely largely on architecture ad extremum (read: paper architecture, utopia) this project operates at the scale of the detective mystery or the parable. It sets up an allegorical framework that situates Exquisite Corpses within the lineage of real projects with heavy theoretical underpinnings (Tschumi’s La Villette, Rossi’s urban plazas), but also accepts the dismissive value of fiction. Ultimately, the goal is to revisit a spectral dialogue excluded from most contemporary architectural production, and suggest a probable methodology around which to have discussions of collective memory, meaning, signification, and public identity.

Thesis Supervisor Arindam Dutta Associate Professor of Architectural History Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3

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EXQUISITE CORPSES: AN ARCHITECTURAL MYSTERY

5

Acknowledgments I would like to offer my deepest thanks to Arindam Dutta for being my co-conspirator on this journey, for inventing Mr. White, and for enthusiastically pushing me to ask the important questions of architecture. To Sheila Kennedy and Liam O’Brien, my team of investigators without whom the case of Mr. White would not have been as interesting.

To my friends and faculty in the architecture department, for being so supportive of such an absurd endeavor. To Eric and Kyle for all the fun times. To Michael, for all the encouragement, feedback, and witty comments along the way.

And to my family, for blindly and lovingly supporting me in all my bizarre experiments as I make my way through the world.

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CONTENTS

Introduction: Detectives and The Curious Case of Mr. White’s Exquisite Corpses

9

1. Reading Architecture

15

2. Real and Unreal

37

3. Paranoia

59

4. Representation

71

Appendix i: Urban Monuments, an Unsolicited Proposal

79

Appendix ii: An Exquisite Corpses Cheat Sheet

151

Appendix iii: Notes and Bibliography

155

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A Note on the Format This book is a story about architecture. It is also a story about a fictitious character who succumbs to madness in his quest to find meaning in the built environment and his struggle to constitute what was once labeled avant-garde. As a thesis, this project begins and ends with questions about architectural knowledge, identity, and multi-disciplinary potentials, but what sets this endeavor apart is that it first and foremost questions the reality of an architectural project. In order to productively visit the key themes of this thesis, its contents have been organized as follows: an introduction to the story followed by writings on reading architecture, the real and the unreal, paranoia, and representation. Throughout the writings, graphic representations of the work produced in the course of this project will serve as illustrations that will reinforce certain themes. The story itself is not presented in prose because it is not complete, but will eventually be published as a novella. The appendices at the end can also be used as references and corollary documents to the text.

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INTRODUCTION DETECTIVES AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR. WHITE’S EXQUISITE CORPSES “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

- George Orwell, Why I Write Detectives “In times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator, everybody will be in the position of having to play detective” - Walter Benjamin Why write a detective story about architecture? Because the detective mystery is a curious architectural burlesque. In other words, we can say that to read a detective novel is analogous to performing certain architectural acts. Within this genre, we encounter characters with great attention to detail and deductive power, phantasmagoric urban settings, speculative futures, and suspicious fragments which constitute a whole. Formally, the genre is itself a game of quasi-architectural objects in which structure, characters, and settings play out different roles. I argue that these roles result in creating content that is unmistakably architectonic in character. However, beyond an architectural reading at the base level of the detective mystery, we can also extract a deeper understanding of recurring themes and figures in the literary history of the genre that parallel architectural notions of the uncanny, the sublime, and the mythological. The detective mystery therefore can emerge as an allegorical tool for the representation of a fictional architecture.

The narrative structure of the detective mystery is essentially an architectural project executed in reverse, whereas the conceptualization of said mystery is a parallel analog. The motive and act of catching the culprit can be likened to the concept or initial strategy—the end of the book and the beginning of the project, respectively. On the one side, the story begins with clues or fragments that eventually lead one to the motive and culprit, and on the other, the architectural project becomes more and more detailed (or fragmented) as it develops. This inverse relationship then swiftly changes into a parallel one when we delve into the authorial process. The actual development and planning of the detective story by the author mimics the development of the architectural project since both authors conceive of the “ending first” then proceed to the details.1 The scalar funneling that happens in both cases results in a coherent artifact that must be understood at all scales.

We must also note that the crafting of the fictional narrative is an act largely based on “gut feelings” not unlike a designers mysterious intuition.2 The fact that they are INTRODUCTION

9

both creative acts allows both endeavors to function intuitively, but always with a set of structural constraints stemming from the discipline. The comparisons drawn here are rooted within larger questions of architecture’s permeability, flexibility, and critical connections to other disciplines (read: connections of criticality). Architecture’s balance of structure and intuition, though shared with other arts, establishes the potential for a double agency within the field. That is to say to manifest a detective story about architecture can be equally read as an architectural story about detectives.

In modern literature, there are few characters as predisposed to architectural thought as the detective. He shares with the architect his method, technique, sharp eye, deductive power, acute intuition, and diligence.3 As a character living in a world of mystery where everyone is a suspect and every detail is a clue, the detective must piece together the strange details in order to form a cohesive argument for a motive. He deconstructs crime scenes and with his cunning ability to look at all the (figurative) angles in a space or situation recreates them three—sometimes even four—dimensionally. He is a master of his craft and will always persevere through his task. There are no incomplete mysteries in literature, only those incomplete in real life.

Carlo Salzani writes “Detection is the method of the flâneur, the archaeologist, and the historian,” in a comparison between the historian and the detective to which the architect should be rightfully added. He continues, “the fact that the historian has to work as a detective [is] because what he or she has to uncover in the past is a series of crimes.”4 By crimes he does not mean wrongdoings rather events carried out with certain political agendas. The reconstituting of these events, not unlike Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts, present both a program for the architectural event and the key objects in play.

However, Tschumi in following the tradition of borrowing piecemeal from other disciplines, was reluctant to use the noir drama as a whole. He writes “sometimes to really appreciate architecture, you may even have to commit a murder,” but the murder for him is an instance, not a process.5 The murder mystery is the sum of all its parts, yet the Transcripts only focus on one. As an expanded version of the Transcripts, the detective mystery carries out a completed architectonic object with a motive/thesis, constructed details/clues, characters/architects, and programs/victims.

The architect-detective, however, is a curious character when faced with the question of authorship. A three-way bind presents us with whether the real architect is the author, the detective, or the criminal. The author, charged with instrumentalizing the story, is the omnipresent architect insofar as he is the creator of the master narrative. The criminal, craftsman of the crime, exists as an endgame doomed to fail, but often in charge of his own fate; whether he chooses to leave clues or not, his traces form a map or diagram which must 10

be deciphered—Tschumi’s strategy. The detective then is the precarious figure who follows the traces, pieces them together and crafts the motive. The three characters therefore—and I count the author as a character as he is primarily responsible for the architectonic quality of the story—result in architectural concepts themselves. They operate together with a system of checks and balances in a constant part-to-whole relationship.

The Curious Case of Mr. White’s Exquisite Corpses The story that unfolds within this project revolves around a detective and his struggle to crack the case of the serial killer, Mr. White. Set in contemporary New York City, the narrative follows the mysterious murders of four unrelated strangers during the summer of 2013 amongst anxieties of terrorist attacks and the pervasiveness of virtual media. The instances happened all in different subway stations along Broadway in midtown Manhattan, but what was curious about these deaths was the way in which the victim died. Witnesses at the scenes described fast, jerky movements, terminating in a rigor-mortis-like pose. The detectives assigned to the case have an extremely difficult time deciphering the meaning of these deaths until several discoveries are made.

The first discovery is a series of compounds in the victim’s bloodstream that suggest that the cause of death was a chemical reaction. That is to say that each victim was forcefully injected with several compounds that resulted in the bizarre body movements and involuntary poses. The medical examiner explains that not only were these deaths premeditated, but they may have also been choreographed.

The second discovery is a small white object with a fingerprint on it. The fingerprint belonged to a Charles White, an architect living in NYC. Upon searching Mr. White’s apartment, the detectives come across hundreds of drawings of a plan for the NYC subway stations, small models labeled “monuments”, and hundreds of journals in which Mr. White wrote about architecture, philosophy, the city, and most notably chemistry. One of the journals contained drawings of body parts being manipulated through chemical reactions.

The primary suspect then becomes the mysterious Mr. White. While at his apartment, the police noticed that he had not been present in a long time. Though the police make advances in the case, their inability to fully construe the logic and motives of Mr. White frustrate them. As the story draws to a close, Mr. White remains at large.

Thesis This thesis addresses two broad questions about the discipline of architecture: INTRODUCTION

11

1. How do we (as architects, detectives, and the public) read architecture?

2. What is real and unreal in architecture?

These two questions are then fragmented into smaller topics including signification in architecture: a revisitation of meaning, contemporary state of urban dwelling, and whether it is possible to be avant-garde today. The following chapters seek to unpack these themes in more detail, and outline the methodology undertaken throughout the course of the project.

The chapter on reading architecture tackles the issue of legibility in the built environment. Taking the dismissal of postmodernism as a given, I posit that there is a need to revive dialogues of signification in architectural discourse. If we incorporate the digital into the discussion, we can frame the discussion around a formal agenda for designing monuments, infrastructural elements, and public spaces (see Mr. White’s proposal in the Appendix). In other words we can ask, because architects, detectives, and the public read the built environment differently, how do we introduce legible and meaningful forms back into the city?

The chapter entitled Real and Unreal takes on the second question on the agenda: the reality of the architectural project. If it is possible for architecture (as a project) to exist only on paper or in the imagination, we can state that the realness of architecture lies in it’s existence as a fictional tool. Fiction here is put forth as synonymous with speculative, hypothetical, and alternative. Shifting the paradigm of the thesis as a “real solution,” I explore a different understanding of a speculative project; one rooted in a completely fictional (almost dismissive) framework that reaches out to the literary discipline in an attempt to be critical.

The last two chapters continue the analysis of fiction and pursue the affective potentials of the mystery genre and architectural representation. In the section on paranoia, I examine the traits of the detective novel from a perceptual perspective drawing examples from Walter Benjamin and Rem Koolhaas. The concluding section on representation sums up the project with an emphasis on the necessity for appropriate architectural representation. I argue that testing the limits of representation allows for a multiplicity of readings and facilitates the discussion of particular themes, such as the roles of spectacle and performance. By using this thesis defense as an example that sought to question the limits of representation, the goal is to set up a precedent for an alternative way of representing an architectural project.

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Bernard Tschumi, Advertisements for Architecture, Architectural Design 47. 1977 INTRODUCTION

13

TOKENS

a.

2a.

2a.

2a.

2a-5d.

(2a-5d)-d.

(2a-5d)-d.

vlt((2a-5d)-d).

Obeliskora.

a.

4a.

4a x f.

4a x f.

(4a x f)-2d.

(4a x f)-2d.

(4a x f)-2d.

vlt((4a x f)-2d).

Obeliska.

b.

b/2.

c.

d.

b/2.

c - 16d.

c - 16d.

d.

e.

~e.

e.

~e.

(b/2) + 10.

f.

f - (f/10).

ttr(c - 16d).

d.

3e - (1/3 - z).

11e - 1/4.

vtr(f - (f/10)).

(d - (d/2)) - 4e.

3e - (1/3 - z) + vtr.

3e - (1/3 - z) + vtr.

(11e - 1/4) - 10d.

vtr(f - (f/10))/2.

Mr. White’s morphological variants on primitive forms.

14

(vlt((b/2) + 10 - 5e)) - 5d.

(ttr(c - 16d)) - (d x c).

d - (d/2).

(11e - 1/4) - 10d.

vtr(f - (f/10))/2.

vlt((b/2) + 10 - 5e).

ttr(c - 16d).

d - (d/2).

3e.

11e.

(b/2) + 10 - 5e.

vtr(f - (f/10))/2.

(ttr(c - 16d)) - (d x c).

vlt((d - (d/2)) - 4e).

vtr(f - (f/10))/2 - 2d.

Theatora.

Tricade.

avg(3e - (1/3 - z) + vtr).

(11e - 1/4) - 10d.

Pentunda.

Archeatre.

vlt(11e - 1/4) - 10d) - 20d.

Archora

vlt(vtr(f - (f/10))/2 - 2d).

Cylindra

CHAPTER ONE READING ARCHITECTURE

“This moment was that in which language invaded the universal problematic; that in which, in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse—provided we can agree on this word—that is to say, when everything became a system where the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences.”

- Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference How do we read architecture? They key to this question lies in what constitutes the “we.”

Architecture’s long bout with legibility and signification put the architect at the front of the debate.1 However, if we take the “we” to mean the public, issues of reading architecture become increasingly more complex. Holistic legibility would have to rely on studies of human perception, psychology, and even democracy to an extent. Moreover, if the “we” refers to detectives, then the field changes completely. That is to say that the way detectives experience space or architectural forms is influenced by the case on which they are working.

What these examples illustrate is the complexity of architectural signification. How does an architecture convey meaning or symbolic value to a larger audience than architects?

This question is posed by me as both the author of this thesis, and also as Charles White. Taking the dismissal of postmodernism as a given, the goal here is to revisit discussions of meaning and signification in architecture. For White, the key to this is a reducible language of forms. By establishing a minimalist grammar, the project becomes hyper-democratic.

He designs a typological Richter Set of repeatable forms that can be combined in infinite ways; that way the potential for legibility remains in the hands of the public. Later in the story, however, Mr. White’s initial thesis evolves into an anthropomorphic study of form and figuration. He keeps the idea of combinatory forms, but the combinatory logic evolves to a more figural one. In other words, he uses the human figure as a way of deriving formal compositions.

The physical and digital representations of the research conducted by Mr. White lead to a new methodology for formal inquiry that picks up where the avant-garde of the 1970s and 80s left off. Putting aside theory-laden discourses on semiotics and linguistics and focusing on psychology and perception, a new discussion of signification can emerge; one based on typology. By situating himself in the public domain (designing public monuments), Mr. White can ignore economic pressures and focus solely on the legibility of the monument. His project, Urban Monuments (see Appendix i), is first and foremost a form of formal analysis that seeks to embed meaning back into the fabric of the city.

The goal of reviving these dialogues stems out of a perceived need of the public for legible forms in the built environment. As the novelty of complex surfaces and modernist READING ARCHITECTURE

15

Mr. White’s initial Urban Monuments studies on typology and form. aesthetics wanes, new forms must be introduced into the city: meaningful ones. Therefore, the design research (undertaken by me as Charles White and as myself ) in this phase is based on the physical and morphological qualities of types and forms.

16

Mr. White’s combinatory grammars.

These gramars stem from an obsession with the monolith and perfect square proportions.

Using the monolith as a primary signifier, new typologies are achieved through combinatory strategies.

READING ARCHITECTURE

17

Mr. White’s infinite combinations.

18

READING ARCHITECTURE

19

A case study of one specific configuration for Times Square plaza. The monument is a subway entrance, a theatre, a public restroom, and a ventilation shaft.

20

READING ARCHITECTURE

21

22

READING ARCHITECTURE

23

30'-5"

37'-6 3/4"

1'-1 1/4"

69'-9 1/4"

20'-0"

26'-0"

24 20'-0"

4'-0"

26'-0" 20'-0"

4'-0"

26'-0" 20'-0"

38'-8"

4'-0"

26'-0"

14'-0 1/4"

10'-0"

75'-0"

2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0"

239'-7"

Changing the mode of representation ultimately changes the reading of the project.

READING ARCHITECTURE

25

135'-7 3/4"

26 16'-6 3/4" 1'-1 3/4"

99'-7"

2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0"

33'-6" 1'-1"

9'-9"

20'-3 1/4"

2'-0" 120'-0"

116'-0"

20'-0"

116'-0"

2'-0"

14'-11 1/4" 29'-10 3/4" 14'-11 1/4"

READING ARCHITECTURE

27

28

19'-0"

20'-0"

19'-0" 220'-0"

38'-9 3/4"

15'-0"

15'-0"

20'-0"

20'-0"

15'-0"

13'-0"

15'-0"

4'-0" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0"

26'-0" 19'-0"

10'-0"

58'-2 1/4"

10'-0"

54'-0"

3'-6"

2'-0" 120'-0" 2'-0"

6'-2 1/4"

26'-0"

READING ARCHITECTURE

29

37'-0"

10'-0"

18'-6"

30

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

2'-0" 26'-0"

16'-0" 16'-0"

20'-0" 20'-0" 10'-0"

26'-0"

116'-0"

15'-0"

10'-0"

116'-0"

7'-0"

17'-2 3/4"

7'-0"

10'-0"

10'-0"

200'-0" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 8'-5 1/4" 2'-0" 2'-0" 120'-0" 2'-0"

1'-0"4'-3"

1'-2 3/4"

READING ARCHITECTURE

31

"7-'02

"0-'03

"7-'02

"4/3

"0-'03

"4/3

4-'32

"0-'82

"0-'82 " 0-' 1

" 0-' 1 "0-'51

"0-'51

"0-'4

"0-'4

"0-'51

"0-'51

"0-'62

"0-'62

01 " 8- ' 5

"0-'4

"0- '021

" 8- ' 5

01

" 0 - ' 51

" 0 - ' 51

"0-'4

"0- '021

"0-'62

"0-'62

"0-'4

"0-'4

"0-'82

"0-'82 "4/3 11-'6

"4/3 11-'6

"6-'2

"6-'2

"0-'58

"0-'58

" 4/

10

1-'

" 4/ 46

1

"0- '03 "0-'51

10

1-'

46

1

"0- '03 "0-'51

"0-'51

"0 '1

"0-'51

"0 '1

"0-'82

"0-'82

" 0' 51

" 0' 51

"4 /1 2 - '6

"4 /1 2 - '6

째0 9

째0 9

.91

.91

1

1

"0- '82

"0- '82 "0-'021

"0-'021

"0- '51

3

"0-'7 "0-'1 "0-'7

"0- '51

"0-'7 "0-'1 "0-'7

"0-'0

"0-'0

3

"0-'1

"0-'1

"0- '51

"0- '51

"4/3 6-'52

"4/3 6-'52

"0- '05

"0- '03 "0-'001

"0-'02

"0- '05

"0- '03

"0-'02

"0-'001

Emphasis can be placed on the infrastructure, material, scale, or figure-ground to achieve multiple readings.

32

4-'32

"0-'03 "0-'51

"0-'03 "0-'51

"4/1 4 -'9

"0-'51

"0-'51

"4/1 4 -'9

"0-'06

"0-'06

"0 '1

"0 '1 " 0-

11

-'6

° 31 .0

°34.

3

"0

6 51

" 2/

11

'5 1

"0-'021

" 2/

" 0-

"0-'021

"0

'5 1

1 - '7

1 - '7

-'6

° 31 .0

°34.

3

6 51

"5-'44

"5-'44

"0-'06

"0-'06 .9 5 °78

°78

.9 5

'09 "0 -

'09 "0 -

"0- '03 "0- '51

"0- '03 "0- '51

"0- '51

"0- '82

"0- '82

"0-'2

"0-'8

1 -'6 "0

"0

"0

-' 8

-'0 1

.52 °06

.52 °06

1

1 4-

"2 '08

/1

4-

'08

"3-'7

"3-'7 - '1 "0 - '7

"3-'7

"3-'7

"6

"0- '51

"0- '51 "0- '51

- '1

/1

"0

"2

- '7

1

-'0 1

"0-'4

-' 8

"0- '021

"0-'4

"0- '021 -'6

"0-'8

"0

"0

"4/1 1-'86

"0- '62

"4/1 1-'86

"0- '62

" 0- ' 8

"6

"0-'2

"0-'8

" 0- ' 8

"0-'8

"0

"0- '51

"0- '51

Legibility relies on what is hidden and what is revealed. For more drawings of Mr. White’s Urban Monunments see Appendix i.

READING ARCHITECTURE

33

Mr. White’s shift in scale is accompanied also by a shift in formal inquiry. Here the emphasis on form is figural. Like hand puppets, White uses the constraints of the human form to achieve new combinatory compositions, ones not restrained by typology or monumentality.

34

READING ARCHITECTURE

35

36

CHAPTER TWO REAL & UNREAL

“The architectural process is not an abstract. It has its basis in life as much as in myth.”

- Peter Cook, The Drawing as Wish If we take fiction to be synonymous with speculative or hypothetical, what are the roles of the real and unreal in the architectural project? They key lies in the term “alternate.” To state that a thesis project posits the alternate is a given. That is to say that a student’s responsibility after years of studying should be to give alternative solutions to particular problems within his or her field. Yet, these so-called solutions in architecture present a dichotomy of understanding rooted in two very distinct historical traditions within the discipline. On one side of the coin we have the imaginary alternative and on the other, the real alternative. These two modes of operating in architecture have yielded most of the historical canon of architectural models: archetypical projects in the development of architecture’s history. Recently, versions of these alternatives have begun to re-emerge as instantiated hypotheses of our not-so-uncertain future.1

The real alternative can be understood as a predominantly scientific process. The positivism inherent in such practices relies on a priori notions of the world as is or rather as politicians and sociologists explain the current circumstances to be. Though architects are highly gifted at infiltrating neighboring disciplines, the effect of the “outreach” often leaves a negative stereotype on our profession (read: “those architects are such know-it-alls!”). This is evident in numerous current projects which seek to undermine the questionable autonomy of architecture of the postmodern period in an attempt to assert agency in the unstable world—one need only look at any recent M.Arch. theses at universities like MIT to get a glimpse of this in action.2 Whether architecture can solve the the world’s “crises” is not the question here, but rather how does an architectural education prepare one to do so? Or even, how do we begin contribute to issues more suited to engineering or economics? These questions are not at all new, but are key to the understanding of a project’s real alternative.

They present the counter argument to Manfredo Tafuri’s notion that instead of worrying, “the mass of architects should just do architecture.”3 One can say that if there are anxieties currently present in the discipline, it is from here that they stem. Can we, should we, must we intervene?

On the other side and at the heart of this thesis, the heroic notion of the architect is much more readily seen in the all-too-familiar imaginary alternatives put forth in the sixties to early eighties. Those socially symbolic projects rooted in words like utopia and radical were dismissed as part of a theoretical period that yielded more confused faces than project commissions. Nevertheless, history accepted these projects as part of that set of imaginary alternatives already seen the previous century with architects like C.N. Ledoux and E. L. REAL & UNREAL

37

Boullée, among others.4 Perhaps it has something to do with the speed at which our culture is moving, but it seems that we’ve come full circle as these kaleidoscopic speculations reemerge and as we continue to re-theorize the permanence of modernity itself. Reinhold Martin most recently took up the task of re-theorizing those “vague and exhausted” words, postmodernism and utopia, presenting a 21st Century look at themes that act as specters within architecture. What Martin does with his re-territorialization is not resurrect a dead or taboo subject, but outline a method which allows us to live with these ghosts long after their supposed death—the specter of Utopia will always haunt architects.5 “In a world driven by nonsensical statements, the most absurd of positions then becomes the clearest path.”

- WAI Think Tank, Narrative Architecture: A Manifesto

The most recent understanding of the imaginary alternate has come to mean fictional. But this cynical synonymy only serves to dismiss the issue at hand, which is the moral—here to mean the right versus the wrong way of acting—intention behind the alternate. The alternate is a specific kind of fiction which constitutes themes and motifs apparent in the cultural imaginary. To a certain end, the fictional seeks to narrate an interpolation between both realms, mimicking the real but positing the imaginary. The most evident projects operating this way range from well known projects such as Rem Koolhaas’ Exodus to John Hejduk’s Berlin Masques. Most recently, this speculative practice can be seen with figures like Jimenez Lai and WAI (What About It) Think Tank whose work is clearly haunted by the ghosts of utopia, futurism and narrative architecture and events like the Once Upon a Place conference in 2010 and the upcoming Writing Place conference which bring together scholars to discuss the relevance of fiction and literary methods in architecture.6 “Dancing between the line of narrative and representation, cartooning is a medium that facilitates experimentations in proportion, composition, scale, sensibility, character plasticity, and the part-towhole relationship as the page becomes an object.”

- Jimenez Lai, Citizens of No Place

Though the fictional alternative works primarily in narrative form, it should be counted separate from that dismissively idiosyncratic red herring paper architecture. Paper architecture possesses a different set of ambitions and preoccupations than the narrative tools 38

of fiction. The former is a product of economic and esthetic forces that placed architectural production in a position of object-making through excesses already present in the discipline, while the latter is a predominantly representative tool that can generate a wide variety of scenarios as means of disseminating architectural thought. Thus, a fictional project can end up being paper architecture, but that is not to say that all fictional projects must be.

Faced with this existential dilemma, the fictional project runs the risk of being marginalized due to its inability to be understood as more than just a theoretical project, that is to say an imaginary alternative. But as we’ve stated before, the fictional lies at the crossroads of the real and the imaginary—not necessarily in the Lacanian psychoanalytic sense, though some have argued this as well.7 So how are we to understand this particular mode of practice within the discipline if we can neither say that it is paper architecture (an object) nor that it is simply a theoretical solution (imaginary alternative)? The key to this understanding is representation and process.

“There is no architecture without representation...At the root of the architect’s creation, we find the need to represent,” writes Douglas Darden whose primary concern within his own projects was the idea of exploring what could equate in architecture to writing’s figurative language.8 The idea of representation as a tool for design is sometimes difficult to see in drawing because they are masked with the denseness of the object. However, if we look at narrative, we find that with the added dimension of time, that object becomes an experience within which the process—the movement within the story—illustrates for the reader morals, critiques, speculations, and alternatives. Representation, whether it’s a poem, novella, film, or comic book, is the means for the architectural knowledge, not the ends.

These means for disseminating architectural knowledge have unfortunately been grouped into the category of “narrative architecture.” Somewhat synonymous with its paper counterpart, this term is also deceptively marginalizing. The problem lies when comparing, for example, the poems of John Hejduk to the parables of Douglas Darden. While both are clear examples of narrative and highly architectural pieces of work, they could not be more different. Hejduk uses the poem to illustrate a phenomenological dimension to memories of particular places. The poem thus becomes a tool for sharing a memory exclusively his.

Darden on the other hand, seeks to achieve a certain morality with his project. By likening them to parables, he explores an architectural figurative language powerful and vague enough to produce a cathartic reaction in the reader/onlooker; not to mention the highly melancholic representations in which they are embedded.9 Narrative is a highly indexical term.

Alternatively, WAI Think Tank’s recent manifesto for “Narrative Architecture” seeks to provide a response to the current “seriousness of architectural discourse.” Though they accept the ambitions of architecture (read: buildings and master plans), the stated goal of their REAL & UNREAL

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manifesto is to “talk to architecture about architecture.”10 This revisitation of autonomous thought, however, remains still too vague and dismissive in the complex spectrum of our pluralistic contemporaneity. One need only be reminded of the questions posed by the real alternatives discussed earlier. A better definition of autonomy may come from Reinhold Martin again. We can say that architecture’s real autonomy comes from the fact that its “participation in heterogeneous networks of power...actually increases with its withdrawal into private games played in an esoteric language.”11 That is to say that the more architects talk to to other architects about architecture, the longer architects become unaware of their participation in the world, for better or worse. WAI’s manifesto’s shortcoming is that, while establishing a productive revisitation of previous project methodologies, namely Archigram, Superstudio, etc., it does not differentiate between architecture ad extremum—the projects of those previously mentioned groups—and architectural, let’s say, parables—stories with a moral or thematic underpinnings which posit the aforementioned alternate realities. The danger with manifestos is that it becomes too easy to be either pro-narrative architecture or against it.

Yet, these alternate realities whether real or imagined, fictional or plausible, remain the primary concern of the architectural project. Though some schools of thought are at odds with each other as to which is more relevant to the education of an architect, we can agree that at the root of the architectural knowledge is an understanding of representation.

Richness in the methods of representation allows the author a higher disseminative value to the project, and to use representation as process becomes another means for articulating a specific subject position. One need not prefer one over the other—diversity is valued above all else in our current discourses—but it is important to understand when specificity is required and that to eschew a methodology to the peripheries of the discipline requires a lot more force than simple categorization. Faced with the challenge of relevance, fictional narratives with architectural content will continue to emerge because stories consist of an intricate balance of technique and critique and are some of the most powerful ways to activate our brains.12

40

A short video wherein I play three distinct witnesses of Mr. White’s actions and a medical examiner.

There’s a specific character to the video. It was meant to look as real as possible, but also a little anachronistic, highlighting the fictional dimension of the story.

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Footage of the incidents show mass hysteria and police mediation in the subways of New York City.

42

The county medical examiner explains the autopsy results and the curious compounds that were found in the victims. A special police unit raids Mr. White’s apartment.

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Throughout the clips of Mr. White’s apartment, the detective’s voice narrates the state of the investigation and the discovery of the architectural project.

44

Near the end of the footage, a tape that was found in Mr. White’s apartment plays. It is Mr. White rehearsing the presentation of his project for New York City.

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Mr. White’s Apartment (top) and the police investigation (bottom).

46

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Mr. White’s journals on medicine and the human body.

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Mr. White’s journals on composition.

50

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Mr. White’s journals on his project, Urban Monuments 52

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Mr. White’s journals on architecture.

54

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Report of investigation complete with autopsy reports, witness accounts and evidence pictures.

56

A fake autopsy report.

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CHAPTER THREE PA R A N O I A

“The anesthesia of a fear through another one is the traveler’s salvation. Between the fresh cut pages of the crime novel he looks for the idle, as it were, virginal apprehensions, which could help him to get over the archaic fear of the journey.”

- Walter Benjamin Beyond character and structure as quasi-architectural objects, we find that the detective mystery can also be placed within a lineage of esthetic and and qualitative architectural concerns, namely phenomenology and critique. Through figures like Walter Benjamin and Anthony Vidler, we can extract an underlying theoretical potential in the double agency of the kriminalroman and the story of Mr. White itself. Unpacking theories of metropolitan life, the uncanny, and the sublime can situate the detective mystery within a larger architectural context from which to establish an allegorical critique.

The detective mystery can be understood as a way of reading an architectural project and engaging the inherent paranoia and anxiety present in the reader. Originally a tool for anesthetizing the “anxieties of modern life,” the crime or detective novel has always been an urban construct.1 One rarely found a mystery that did not deal with urban realities or environments. This was partially due to the demographic for which it was intended, but also due to the uncanny nature of metropolitan life. Anthony Vidler writes, A contemporary philosopher of urban architecture is faced then, at the end of the twentieth century, not so much with the absolute dialectic of ancient and modern posed by the avant- and rear-gardes of the last eighty years, as with the more subtle and difficult task of calculating the limits of intervention according to the resistance of the city to change.2

Vidler’s point here is that the modern idea of acting in the city is subverted by human anxieties of what it means to dwell in the modern city in the first place. Therefore, the task of the architectural agent is to put aside anxieties and provide solutions to the problem of urban dwelling. This is evident in the case of Mr. White, where his anxieties about building monuments in the city manifest themselves as homicidal visions and limit conditions. His inability to mediate this results in his “alternative” project of murder.

However, what must be noted here is the layering of paranoia within this project (Exquisite Corpses). It is simultaneously set up where one is not sure if the anxiety felt is that of Mr. White, the Detective, the author’s, or their own.

Other anxieties to be mediated by the detective mystery could be those stemming PA R A N O I A

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from within the discipline itself. Whether anxieties due to architecture’s “identity crises” of relevance and agency are real or imagined, they nevertheless pop up from time to time and there are few alternatives deal with it productively. Rem Koolhaas’ work in Delirious New York illustrates one such alternative which reconciles the paranoia inherent in the city as well as in the minds of architects/architecture academics. Borrowing from the surrealists, Koolhaas employs the paranoid critical method of analysis, and executes several “paranoid” projects of his own within the metropolis.3 The result of this “productive paranoia” is a slight delirium where one simultaneously attempts to grasp the lineage of these architectural constructs—neo constructivist forms—and a logic of living in a city in which everything happens “behind the curtain”—its desire. However, these phantom architectures exist only in the mind of the architect/academic, and thus provide an alternate reading of the metropolis exclusively reserved for the discipline (read: autonomy).

Koolhaas’s delirium brings about the notion of using multidisciplinary tropes or devices in architectural discussions. His mode of operating in Delirious New York constitutes a tone similar to a work of literature; it is almost as if he is the biographer of the city. The result of this tone is an affect most likened to those of journalists, and the information is presented as moments of drama in the text. The strategy here being that if one engages the reader’s anxiety in a similarly anxious way, one can distract him and present him with alternate truths (Benjamin’s hypothesis). In short, to fight paranoia one must induce paranoia. To Koolhaas’s credit, his background in journalism and film allowed him to productively utilize these literary devices to his gain. Exquisite Corpses seeks to do the same.

A corollary literary trope to paranoia apparent in detective fiction is the red herring. Traditionally a tool for “throwing others off the scent,” this device is often tied to a paranoid reading of particular plot lines and can be another productive tool for engaging anxieties. Looking at this from a larger disciplinary context, we can say that in the seventies and eighties, “paper architecture” acted as a red herring in the field. That is to say that to some, the celebrated drawing served as a diversionary tactic, ultimately irrelevant, but existing with the guise of plausibility.4 While the dismissal of paper architecture altogether is a recurring theme within our profession, we can examine such self-reflexive perturbations through literary devices, and determine their qualitative value within the discipline.

Throughout the drawings and texts in the story of Mr. White, small elements are inserted to induce this specific paranoia both at the scale of the project and of the discipline. The productive paranoia is much like Dali’s paranoid critical method, where certain fragments operate as a kind of deja vu in the annals of architectural history. The reader chooses to believe he is seeing some meaningful fragment that he has seen before.

What’s more is that the critic himself is then able to project his own neuroses into the 60

Le Corbusier with his Palace of the Soviets proposal. 1930. A picture ingrained in history. project and become a character: a detective. The drawings and images themselves bring out a specific mood as well. In the case of the story of Mr. White, they are schizophrenic drawings produced by a mad architect, but they are not overly fantastical, they represent a very real architectural issue: the intersection of public space, infrastructure, and monumentality in the city. The other side of the coin is the detective’s paranoia which is embodied in his inability to read the clues. Therefore, the constant back and forth between the hidden and revealed, familiar and unfamiliar in Vidler’s terms, uncovers potential readings of the same project, and destabilizes the legible dimension of Mr. White’s clues. The detective’s paranoia then is the ultimate tool for reading architecture and architectural history.

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Le Corbusier’s studio in Paris (top). 1961. Mr. White’s studio in Brooklyn (bottom). 2013

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TOKENS

a.

2a.

2a.

2a.

2a-5d.

(2a-5d)-d.

(2a-5d)-d.

vlt((2a-5d)-d).

Obeliskora.

a.

4a.

4a x f.

4a x f.

(4a x f)-2d.

(4a x f)-2d.

(4a x f)-2d.

vlt((4a x f)-2d).

Obeliska.

b.

b/2.

c.

d.

b/2.

c - 16d.

c - 16d.

d.

e.

~e.

e.

~e.

(b/2) + 10.

f.

f - (f/10).

ttr(c - 16d).

d.

3e - (1/3 - z).

11e - 1/4.

vtr(f - (f/10)).

3e - (1/3 - z) + vtr.

vtr(f - (f/10))/2.

(vlt((b/2) + 10 - 5e)) - 5d.

(ttr(c - 16d)) - (d x c).

d - (d/2).

(11e - 1/4) - 10d.

vtr(f - (f/10))/2.

vlt((b/2) + 10 - 5e).

ttr(c - 16d).

d - (d/2).

3e.

11e.

(b/2) + 10 - 5e.

(d - (d/2)) - 4e.

3e - (1/3 - z) + vtr.

(11e - 1/4) - 10d.

vtr(f - (f/10))/2.

(ttr(c - 16d)) - (d x c).

vlt((d - (d/2)) - 4e).

vtr(f - (f/10))/2 - 2d.

Theatora.

Tricade.

avg(3e - (1/3 - z) + vtr).

(11e - 1/4) - 10d.

Pentunda.

Archeatre.

vlt(11e - 1/4) - 10d) - 20d.

Archora

vlt(vtr(f - (f/10))/2 - 2d).

Cylindra

Peter Eisenman’s house IV diagrams (top). Mr. White’s morphological diagrams (bottom).

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Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts (top). Mr. White’s murder diagrams (bottom).

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Drawings for Mr. White’s proposal for New York City (see Appendix i).

What’s reflected in these drawings is the melancholy state of Mr. White. His drawings are dark and brooding. They represent his view of the world as well as of himself. There is a Piranesian sublime, a Ledoux-esque sectional technique, and even a Rossi-like treatment of forms.

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Section through 72nd and Broadway monument (see Appendix i).

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Section through 66th and Broadway monument (see Appendix i).

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Section through Columbus Circle monument (see Appendix i).

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Section through Times Square monument (see Appendix i).

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CHAPTER FOUR R E P R E S E N TAT I O N

“There is no architecture without representation...At the root of the architect’s creation, we find the need to represent” - Douglas Darden The culmination of any design research project requires a precise representation appropriate for the transmission of the key concepts. The architect’s role throughout the entire process is not only to formulate the concepts or critiques, but represent them accurately. Thus, it is evident that representation lies at the heart of any architectural project and is ultimately the unifying thread. Appropriate representation, in short, means that if a project revolves around a fictional architect, then the fiction must be pervasive. This search for alternative representations is by no means a novel point in the discipline. Most notably in recent history, architects have experimented with the comic book (Jimenez Lai, Wes Jones), the science-fiction short (Jack Self ), the poem (John Hejduk, Roger Connah), and even the film (MOS, Bernard Tschumi) as ways of conceiving and representing a project.1 For these authors, architecture functions as a character or primary agent, rather than the backdrop, and representation can take on a new dimension; one based on narrative perception’s culturally established a priori, that is a primal phenomenon of human life. They ask not whether stories themselves are relevant to the discipline, but rather what kind of stories and narrative tropes are more architectural than others, how does this technique impact form, and what can we learn from the added dimension?

In the case of Exquisite Corpses, representation is the overarching continuum linking the themes of the real versus unreal, detective mystery, and architectural signification. From the very beginning of this project, the question of how to represent a project in a cohesive, yet clear and critical way drove much of the design research. This representation research manifested itself in all the layers of the project: the characterization of Mr. White, his metathesis, and the final thesis defense.

The development of Mr. White as a character allowed the fictional dimension to embody a set of personal neuroses about contemporary architecture. The metaphysical removal of oneself from the project and embedding of specific anxieties and critical concerns into Mr. White allowed for an exploration of the limits of architectural representation. As discussed in the chapter on real versus unreal, the use of fiction gives the reader (and the author) an instant cop-out. This dismissal, however, leads to a heightened experience of particular parts of the project. In the case of Mr. White, we are able to push past the feasibility of an architect-serial-killer and ask questions of why his architecture leads to murder, and how would an architect commit such a crime? As I stated in the chapter on anxiety and paranoia, the character’s form of representing architecture is an anxious, brooding one, filled R E P R E S E N TAT I O N

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Stage set of the final thesis defense. It was set up as a detective investigation board complete with evidence boxes, photocopies of Mr. White’s journals and evidence tags. with melancholy. From this we can gather much about Mr. White’s personality and what sets him apart.

Mr. White’s proposal for New York is represented as a traditional thesis proposal with research, subject positions, and original design work. A different kind of realism is represented here. The project for New York can be taken literally, but can also be subjected to a more critical interpretation. Mr. White’s inherent positivism comes across in the proposal, and we can begin to see traces of both the architect’s struggle to be an active agent of change and his delusions of grandeur. The written portion of his proposal is written in a tone that seeks to characterize Mr. White as the madman that he will eventually become.

The final thesis defense for this project was the culmination of the research on representation. It was presented as a piece of theatre, where I played multiple roles, while simultaneously discussing the project as a whole. In an attempt to bring Mr. White to life, I produced a video of the ongoing investigation on his murders. The success of the methodology remains questionable, but what was evident was the emphasis on legibility and fiction. Unpacking the layers of the project leaves it banal and homeostatic. However, presenting it as an interactive drama did allow for a multiplicity of interpretations and a critical discussion about the role of drama in the fictional project.

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The exercise in set design was to make the stage look as realistic as possible. This way, the jurors would be more compelled to interact both in and out of character.

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Photocopies of Mr. White’s journals identified his neuroses and anxieties.

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Red string tied the clues together.

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Layering the drawings on the wall allowed for richer interaction with the content itself. During the defense, the jury was invited to “examine the evidence.�

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APPENDIX i URBAN MONUMENTS: C H UANPS O T LEI R AN C IS TED PROPOSAL BY CHARLES WHITE

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INTRODUCTION

95

MONUMENT

101

FORM

109

MEANING

117

F O L LY

121

4 PROJECTS

148

URBAN MONUMENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Study models for Urban Monuments

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INTRODUCTION

This thesis addresses the issues of monumentality, memory, and architectural agency within the context of New York City’s public spaces. Taking the current context as a given—the lack of a discussion of these themes in the production of space in the city—I posit that revisiting and expanding specific notions of monumentality and memory results in the production of meaningful public spaces that introduce a new reading of the city; one that has been lost due to social class shifts, the privatization of public space, and ambivalent attitudes towards the infrastructure of the city. This loss, along with the taking over of architectural production by real estate developers and a focus on efficient construction systems has marginalized the role of architecture within the public sphere. In the context of Manhattan, public space remains a commodity traded by urban planning bodies and corporations for economic incentives and political power. This attitude blurs the distinction between public and private space and throws off the balance. With the notion of privately-owned-public-space in Manhattan, the corporate, private world has developed a trojan horse that invades the public sphere and excludes a major percentage of the public. This attitude, along with the idea of infinitely tall skyscrapers (read: economic development) and projected mass urbanization poses a threat to the public realm of the metropolis.

The post-Vietnam era saw a complete change in the economic and social structure of Manhattan. The emergence of gentrification and redevelopment as a direct result of excess capital and post-industrial economic production began a series of shifts in the class structure of various New York City neighbourhoods and public spaces. Taking Union Square as a case study, Rosalyn Deutsche writes that during the decade of the 1980s, “the economic function

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of the neighbourhood...superseded the broader social function.”1 That is to say that the built environment became the primary contested capital among economic players in the city.

Coupled with this game of capital accumulation, Deutsche argues that the shifts in the labor force—from blue collar to white collar—also played a key role in the realization of marketincentivized urban planning.2 The demographics of certain neighbourhoods shifted from light-manufacturing employees to service-based professionals resulting in an era of “intense class polarization.” An emphasis on the potentials for profit of these neighbourhoods resulted in a mass exodus of the lower-income population illustrating a kind of waterfall effect in development and spatial politics. New York’s rising status as an international economic epicenter brought with it a significantly less proletariat class which then increased potential for capital for property owners by catering to this class (read: gentrification), and ultimately leading to the privatization of public space.

A reconstitution of public space emerged out of this economic discrepancy and political shift. Terms like “revitalization” and “redevelopment” were used to legitimate the opportunistic attitudes undertaken by the bourgeois, upper-income demographic and the profit-hungry urban planning bodies.3 At the same time, the new hegemonic class proceeded to constitute what Jürgen Habermas describes as a pseudo-public sphere: a bourgeois demographic partnered with the city that has “yielded to a public sphere that is privately owned, determined by profit motives, and characterized by the transformation of

1. Deutsche, Rosalyn. Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996) 15.

2. Ibid., 17.

3. Ibid., 19.

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Fig. 1. Location of privately owned public spaces in high-value areas of Manhattan. Source: Suarez, Richard Anthony. A new life for plazas: Reimagining privately owned public spaces in New York City. Thesis.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2012.

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the conditions of everyday life into objects of production.”4 The tensions of this consumerist turn resulted in two types of outcomes. The first is illustrated through the materialization of Privately Owned Public Space or POPS initiative, while the counter attitude can be seen through cultural collaborations in the development of Battery Park City in the early 1980s.

With the introduction of POPS in 1961, zoning restrictions were modified to allow the public to enter plazas and other zones in the city previously inaccessible. The POPS initiative engaged the private sector by providing tax incentives, and F.A.R. (floor area ratio) bonuses in exchange for secession of private land, usually at street level.5 However, the politics surrounding these spaces brought up issues of control, surveillance, and inevitably exclusion. The focus on these issues divided understandings of the city into one: the shaping of the city as a social process, and two: the shaping of the city as a functional process. An example of this can be seen with Mayor Ed Koch’s initiative to remove the homeless from Grand Central Station.6 In 1988, he called for the station to have one objective function— transportation, thereby explicitly denying it’s use as a public space and permitting control mechanisms that ensure this sole function—largely by evicting the homeless from the station. Today, the 500+ POPS in the borough of Manhattan (which add up to around 85 acres of public land) are controlled and designed through regulatory policies rather than social or democratic processes. The quality and usage of these space, therefore, reflects

4. Ibid., 59.

5. Schmidt, Stephan, Jeremy Nemeth, and Erik Botsford. “The Evolution of Privately Owned Public Spaces in New York City.” URBAN DESIGN International 216 (2011): 271.

6. Deutsche, 51.

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these managerial strategies, for better or worse.7 However, these mechanisms—established in the 1970s and 80s—have become outdated sociological structures. Policies regarding surveillance, design, and maintenance can no longer exclude the public realm in the midst of social activism, public art, and pluralistic cultural visions. There is a clear need for a reconstitution of public space in the city; perhaps the era of POPS is over.

If the POPS initiative brought up certain Foucauldian critiques of spatial politics and control mechanisms, the development of Battery Park City can be posited as the corollary attitude of urban planning in New York City. Began around the same time as the POPS, Battery Park City is usually seen as a successful project with “multiple victories—of public policy, public space, urban design, and city planning.”8 Though it has a rocky history—the plan was in the works for over ten years, and debates about low-income housing, and public policy slowed the process—Battery Park City is significant as it symbolizes a real convergence of cultural and economic balance within the planning process and creation of space in the city. The “collaborative ventures between artists, architects, and landscape architects” reflected not only human needs for culture and art, but also for design and diversity.9 These collaborations included the design of parks, plazas, and gardens designed to stimulate and diversify the environment, while at the same time integrating the microcosm within the larger context of New York. The acceptance and integration of these ideas marks Battery Park City as victorious in one sense, but falls short in actual practice. In the 1990s, Battery

7. Schmidt et al., 271.

8. Deutsche, 81.

9. Ibid., 90.

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Park City remained “ghettoized and exclusionary” as a result of the realities of gentrified development.10 It became evident that no matter how much planning bodies collaborate with public artists and designers, the economic repercussions of new development sooner or later result in hierarchies and social class shifts.

Most recently, New York City has also put forth a number of initiatives to reclaim certain avenues for public use. The biggest example of this is Times Square, where 7th ave. between 47th and 42nd is permanently closed off to vehicular traffic.11 The plans for these public plazas, however, illustrate a two-dimensional, planar approach to space making that relies on seating, planters, and graphics to designate the area. Though these “squares” provide a pedestrian-friendly space, the area itself is banal, and acts more as a corridor than a plaza, particularly during peak hours. This single dimension of public space continues to be tightly sandwiched between two giants—the corporation and the city—and though it is not an official privately-owned public space, it can be read as a private-public-private sandwich where the ground datum is an infinitely thin line between the corporate space above and the infrastructural space below.

The point of departure for this proposal is an opposition to the modes of public space design that began in the 1970s and have continued well into the 21st century. This thesis takes the context of Manhattan as a functionalist, profit-driven apparatus, that regards the public—and public space—as a commodity. The failure of various attempts at engaging cultural and public space demands in real estate (i.e. Battery Park City) presents a need 10. Ibid., 93 11. “Public Plazas.” NYC DOT. The City of New York. 25 Nov. 2013 <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/public-plazas.shtml>.

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to reconstitute what it means to design public space. Traditional modes of development ultimately result in gentrification and an increase in surrounding property values, thereby creating exclusionary public space. These spaces reflect the functionalist outlook. However, if we break the link between real estate development and public space design, turning over the responsibilities of the latter to the city, a new paradigm of infrastructural-public space can be achieved. This model reverses the effect of gentrification by accepting that infrastructural construction does not increase surrounding property valuesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;often times it lowers themâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and offers opportunities for implementation of truly public space. Yet, there must be a balance in order to create successful public interventions in the city; the infrastructural elements must be able to integrate into the public elements, and the public elements must shape the urban landscape in order to convey meaning.

The definition of urban meaning will be a process of conflict, domination, and resistance to domination, directly linked to the dynamics of social struggle and not to the reproductive spatial expression of a unified culture. Furthermore, cities and space being fundamental to the organization of social life, the conflict over the assignment of certain goals to certain spatial forms will be one of the fundamental mechanisms of domination and counter-domination in the social structure.12 What Manuel Castells posits here is the potential for meaningful public space by removing itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s functionalist values and allowing it to be shaped by the social structure itself.

Taking Castells point as a design strategy, this project focuses on the redesign of the New York City Subway entrances. Existing as an inadvertent repository of the public, they offer 12. Deutsche, 53.

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the potential for architectural interventions, infrastructural reorganization, and a resurgence of the collective memory of the city. Because they are not tied to specific real estate interests, these sites present a socially symbolic moment in the city where the accumulation is one of people and not capital.

The subway entrance has primarily been the interface between the public and the city infrastructure. The transportation network which these instances served was the public’s way of experiencing the bowels of the city—the belly of the beast. The mystery and wonder initially associated with these spaces initially led to a specific identity for the metropolis.

New York City was branded, like Guimard’s Paris, and the entrances became gates into a fantastic new world. Today the subway entrance has been reduced to a hole in the ground providing minimal access to the various networks that live underneath. The identity has been reduced to a typographic brand and though some remnants of the phantasmagoric spaces are still visible, some of the most intriguing ones have long been decommissioned— see the Rafael Guastavino designed City Hall subway entrance. This project seeks to flesh out these collective memories and give new significance to the New York Subway entrance.

The architectural explorations this project calls for are (1) an expansion of the ground datum on which the subway entrances are located—a shift of the public plane from twodimensional space into three-dimensional space, (2) the use of a minimal formal language to emphasize the monumentality and plasticity, (3) the embedding of subway infrastructure within the architecture, and (4) the identification of a series of public programs and activities that take place in these sites. These explorations are undertaken as an attempt to introduce a new reading of the city. Inserting these interventions as key moments of drama in the city, 88

Fig. 2 (Above). Times Square and Herald Square public plaza plans. Source: http://www. nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/publicplazas.shtml

3

1

Fig. 3 (Right). Broadway Boulevard Master Concession Agreement plans. Source: http:// www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/ public-plazas.shtml 4

2

5

6

7

Broadway Boulevard Master Concession Agreement Licensed Area (shaded in blue) Total area = 15,982 sq. ft. (0.367 acres)

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Fig. 4. A Brief History of the NYC Subway

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Fig. 5. City Hall Station (Decommissioned)

addresses the public in neither an economic nor political way. The goal is for the public to become removed from the limitations of the late-capitalist game for a brief moment in time and constitute a new collective, moving three-dimensionally through the city, and experiencing monuments, infrastructure, and each other.

This architectural process becomes the way to both mediate and celebrate the intersection between the three players in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the private, the public, and the infrastructure. But this game, instead of being about which is the good, the bad, and the ugly, is a balancing act where public space can become as important a generator of the identity of the metropolis as modern infrastructure and real estate development. The way this game is executed is by identifying sites in Manhattan already deeply rooted between the two spheresâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the subway entrancesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;marking them, and unfolding the ground on which they sit, exposing a public space directly between the above-ground and the underground.

This project is the physical architectural transformation of the subway entrance from a banal APPENDIX i

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set of stairs and turnstiles to a fantastical public space. Each station is drastically opened up, thickened, and marked by a mysterious monument, an autonomous architectural object so large in scale that it completely transforms the urban landscape. As such, the subway entrance can then be seen as a configuration of intertwining spaces, unfolding landscapes, and symbolic fragments embodying the new reading of Manhattan. Using formal languages taken from architects Aldo Rossi, John Hejduk, and Bernard Tschumi—who themselves reconstituted various understandings of symbolism in public space and the interactions between architecture and the public13—this project can explore not only a reaffirmation of the public realm, but also an architectural quest into the limits of meaningful compositions and scale. Therefore, at the outset of this project, is an undeniable attempt to create not only public space, but complete urban monuments.

13. Hays, K. Michael. Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-garde. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).

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MANHATTAN: AXONOMETRIC VIEW TOP - STREET LEVEL BOTTOM - SUBWAY SYSTEM

Fig. 2. NYC Subway, Current Stations: A series of potential sites for Urban Monuments.

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94

MONUMENT

The monument is necessary. The monument presents a symbolic break in the fabric of the city. Like the monolith in Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, it represents a precise formal agenda which hides as much as it reveals, and is also the only way to compete with the highrise in the metropolis. It is simultaneously a familiar and unfamiliar object; the monument sets itself apart from the city by being a monolithic, architectural object. The power struggle between the monument and its context then becomes the symbolic gesture between the public and private realms. To use Kasmir Malevich’s terms, the monument will liberate the flat surface through an enhancement of consciousness.1 Scale is the key to monumentality. The phenomenal qualities of specific forms are tied unquestionably to its scale. That a monument can exist without imposing a sense of grandeur or sublimity is a rare thing, and there’s a particular nostalgia for these lost traditions in contemporary society. However, whether it is due to economic issues or exhausted resources the younger architectural generation is largely trapped within a culture of pavilion-making and small-scale installation design. These products, though not lacking in architectural merit, fail to probe into larger issues of public identity and urban architecture.

The rappel-a-l’ordre I insist on is a return to monumentality and a meaningful architecture.

To paraphrase Jose Luis Sert’s and Siegfried Giedion’s points on monumentality, this project seeks to build monuments that transcend generations and express the cultural needs of our society.2 1. Malevich, K, “Suprematist Manifesto Unovis” in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture. Ed. Ulrich Conrads. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1970.

2. Sert, J.L., and S. Giedion. “Nine Points on Monumentality.” Architecture Culture, 1943-1968: Documentary anthology. Ed. Joan Ockman. [New York]: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, 1993.

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Monolith, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968

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PROPORTION SYSTEM -CITY INFRASTRUCTURE

9

4 1

2/3

1/3

1/2

1/2

1/3

2/3

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Fig. 1. Sectional Diagram: Monument 98

Fig. 2. Perspective: Monument

The monument itself is an autonomous slab. Its insertion into the city is controlled by the context (i.e. how much it penetrates the ground and how tall it stands).

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100

FORM

There are two forms active in each site, a positive and a negative. The positive is the infrastructural monument, and the negative is the unfolded public space. The monument is an archetypal form or architectural trope. This form exists as part of the cultural unconscious.

From the building blocks, we play with as kids, we can extract a set of primitive forms that exist. The sphere, the cube, the pyramid, the cylinder, the arch. These primordial forms are links to a particular past, not only in individual life but as part of our collective cultural memories. Thus, the monument must be part of this tradition if it is to carry with it a specific meaning.

The articulation of this form, however, is not perfect. It is distorted, and has an air of mystery. Surface conditions and topological shifts transform the primitive into a less recognizable object while maintaining the primitive gestalt. Like a hand shadow puppet, the familiar object is simultaneously read as the original form and a less familiar foreign object.

Paired with the positive, the negative space unfolds and dives into the belly of the beastâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the city. Surgically stripping away the ground plane, the negative juxtaposes the contextual forms and the archetypal primitives in plan. Taking formal cues from suprematist compositions, the public plazas excavated from the ground plane are transformed three-dimensionally into theatres, access ramps, bicycle parking, public restrooms, and observatories.

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Fig. 1. René Magritte, Mental Arithmetic, 1931

The public programs embedded within the ground plane of the city expand the sectional dimension of the private-public-infrastructure sandwich. Solidifying the formal figure of the public space allows not only a physically deeper connection with the underground networks, but also a conceptual interpolation where the transitions between public, private, and infrastructure are slower, topographical ones, rather than ones based on rudimentary stairs and shafts.

Tschumi’s follies in La Villette, Rossi’s piazzas and squares, and Hejduk’s masques are the primary design drivers for this project. Formally, they deal with the composition of primitive, irreducible elements in the built environment. Thus, the design grammars are usually composed of primary forms, or rectilinear, geometric compositions. The main driving force behind using these platforms as inherited objects is that the projects themselves seek to extract a deeper understanding of form and public space. Tschumi’s constructivist grammars 102

+

+

+

+

Formal Parameters

Volumetric Compositions

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Fig. 2. Bernard Tschumi, Normative Follies

Fig. 3. John Hejduk, Border Guards, Riga Masque

allow for a possibly infinite reconfiguration of follies for public events and activities (Fig. 2).1 Rossiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s city hall plaza at Segrate, Italy functions as a monument and a symbolic bridge between the political power and the public realm (Fig. 3).2 Hejdukâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fantastical masques present a series of caricatures of objects and subjects that reflect the inhabitants of the city through choreographed analogies (Fig. 4).3 It should be noted that this project does not seek to re-theorize abstract concepts of the limits of architectural theory (Jeff Kipnis has already done this in his 3 Masterpieces

1. Tschumi, Bernard. Event-Cities 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

2. Rossi, Aldo, Peter Arnell, and Ted Bickford. Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.

3. Hejduk, John, and Kim Shkapich. Riga, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal: A Work. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.

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Fig. 4. Aldo Rossi, City Hall Plaza, Segrate, Italy

Fig. 5. 3 Masterpieces of 20th Century Architecture

of 20th Century Architecture, Fig. 5).4 Rather, my position regarding these precedents is that they serve as a specific lineage in which to follow, both conceptually and formally.

Architecture is a fundamentally symbolic tool, thus, the use of specific archetypes, be they archaic or not, creates a specific affect. It is this affect that this project seeks to extract.

4. Hays, K. Michael. Architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-garde. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2010.

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106

Fig. 6. 100 Plans (Preliminary study showing 1-52)

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Fig. 1. Section through monolith (Preliminary study) 108

MEANING

This project is based on several binary oppositions. The structure of the object and the subject, the public and the private, and the spectator and the spectacle. As a whole, this project seeks to produce several meanings through specific unfolding of public programs and infrastructures. They manifest themselves as the monument, the ramp, the void, the theatre, and the wall.

The first is the monument. As stated before, the program for this object is simply “mystery,” yet it serves a highly functional role in the system. It contains within it a set of ventilation towers that circulate and filter the air underneath the city. The monument frees up building lots that are currently being used for subway ventilation and becomes the lung of the city, a symbol of the breathing metropolis. This symbolism spawns out of an iconic notion of ventilation in the city. Taking ventilation as a simple infrastructure, we can see several attitudes toward the deployment, and even character of it. From Marilyn Monroe’s image of her fluttering skirt (Fig. 3), to the massive ornamental ventilation towers on Governors Island (Fig. 2), one cannot deal with subway exhaust in New York City without a specific symbolic attitude.

Also embedded within the monument are several antennae that amplify wireless signals for public access. The citizens, along with their screen obsessions end up reaching a new level of connectivity as they join an interactive community cluster, a social network of

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sorts.

The ramp mediates the circulation system between the two worlds. It is a programmed negative space, that formally shears the ground plane and serves to control the flow of traffic. Expanding the notion of architectural promenades, the series of ramps distributed throughout the public ground are programmed topographies inserting a landscape element into an otherwise two-dimensional urban condition.

The void is the primary celebration of the breaking of the ground plane. It is an unprogrammed element, a canyon in the heart of the metropolis that balances the positive space of the city with the negative. In contrast to the historical tradition of the void as signifying the mouth of the subway, this new void, massive in scale serves only to add depth and sublimity to the public experience. It suggests the expansion of the city downward.

The theatre is a topologically transformed greek theatre. Here, the spectacle becomes public activity. Markets, shakespeare, skateboarders, preachers, protesters, all are welcome. The theatre is an open platform for communication and counter-consumerism that seeks to invert the traditional understanding of a transportation hub and exacerbate elements already in place, performance, public markets, etc.

The wall is primarily an infrastructural element that divides, retains, and supports the public program. Scattered throughout the public ground, the wall itself at times 110

Fig. 2. Holland Tunnel Land Ventilation Building

Fig. 3. Marilyn Monroeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s iconic depiction.

Fig. 4. Tunnel vent, Governors Island.

Fig. 5. Standard NYC subway vents. Street level.

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Two attitudes for subway ventilation in NYC.: 58 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, a subway vent disguised as a house.

constitutes part of a particular object: the theatre, the monument, the ramp, and at other times is a free standing autonomous fragment providing balance to the formal composition, but always housing within it support elements: bathrooms, mechanical, storage. The wall, like a fragment of the monument signifies both absence and presence of urban identities.

112

Holland Tunnel exhaust tower.

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1.

2.

Fig. 1. Ventilation shafts (Preliminary study). Air handling units with concrete shaft.

Fig. 2. Final ventilation shaft design.

Tapered shaft with sound-proofing foam insulation. Steel beam structure.

Fig. 3. Two types of ventilation shafts. Type one has sound-proof shell facing the inside. Type two faces outside.

TYPE ONE: INNIE

Fig. 4. Ramp and theatre isolated.

Fig. 5. Monolith as observatory.

Fig. 6. Topological variants on ramps and theatres.

3.

114

TYPE TWO: OUTIE

4.

6.

5.

THE RAMP

THE THEATRE APPENDIX i

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TYPOLOGIES

Church.

Rotunda.

Arcade.

Theatre.

Originally, the idea for the follies was for them to be typologically specific for each site and therefore heterogeneous. The project later evolved into a more systemic distribution of ONE singular strategy (the one rooted in a specific symbolic understanding: the monolith and the penetrations).

116

F O L LY

Though this project is made up of a series of potentially infinite interventions in the city, it should not be construed as a folly or pavilion strategy. The failure of these types lies not in their capacity to be architectonic objects, but rather in their association with a particularly hegemonic cultural structure. That is to say, that instead of being productive typological interventions, the contemporary meaning behind the pavilion or folly is that of a fragment of a “real” architecture in service of the upper class. Therefore, these elements often perpetuate the fundamental lack of truly public interaction.

Combining the ideas of public monuments with public infrastructures can begin to close the gap between the upper and lower realms, not only physically (developer space and underground transportation) but also socially (political and socio-economic status).

The folly should act as a contemporary forum for exchange, much in the classical sense, and be in opposition to the consumerist landscape. The programmatic function of this project expands the public realm, grounding the otherwise powerless public within the city largely controlled by the corporation. This is what I mean by “thickening” the sandwich layer.

These instantiated moments of drama throughout the city act very much like Tschumi’s early proposals for the Parc de la Villette.1 They are coherent compositions, part of a larger game, with a cohesive thread that runs throughout. They do not attempt to rethink

1. Tschumi, Event-Cities 2, p. 64.

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infrastructure or re-theorize it, nor do they propose a new agenda for an urban architecture; what they do is formalize public space and mark the city, establishing a point of departure for new urban memories. It is a game of metropolitan signification, where the inhabitants of New York can reflect, act, and react in regards to the question â&#x20AC;&#x153;what does it mean to dwell in the contemporary city?â&#x20AC;?

118

PUBLIC RESTROOMS MONOLITH

ELEVATOR TO SUBWAY ENTRANCE GLAZING THEATRE VOID ENTRANCE RAMP

MONOLITH VOID

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4 PROJECTS

This project is not utopian. That is to say that it does not situate itself within the realm of radical architectural projects that seek to transform a particular landscape. Though it has a transformational agenda, it is one based on stabilizing an organism that has grown more and more heterogenous as time passed. In other words, we can say that because the current environment in Manhattan is so diverse, the phantasmagoria of the city is fragmented and the public is subjected to an outdated conceptualization of public space (read as: parks, plazas, squares, etc).1 This concept must grow along with the advancements in concepts of architecture and engineering in order for there to be balance.

As previously stated, the way this is done is by expanding the dimension of existing public spaces connected to city infrastructures. Using a primarily cultural driver (architecture), we can begin to physicalize the rapidly vanishing (or virtualizing) social sphere and ground the public in between the corporate realm and the infrastructural realm.

Once again, the people shall have a foothold in the ever-expanding metropolis.

What follows is the documentation of four unsolicited proposals executed according to the principles set forth in this thesis.

1. These classifications come from NYCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DOT website directly. See http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/public-plazas.shtml APPENDIX i

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122

Site Plan, NYC

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72nd & Broadway

Description: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The station at 72nd and Broadway opened on October 27th, 1904. It is an express station with four tracks, two island platforms. This is a most peculiar station for a farsighted railroad like the IRT. It was totally inadequate from its opening day, yet it is the best preserved of the original IRT express stations. 72nd Street long suffered from narrow platforms and narrow stairways to the headhouse and fare control. To maximize the space in the headhouse, free crossover between uptown and downtown directions was artificially denied by the arrangement of the turnstiles and gates.â&#x20AC;?

72nd and Broadway is a tabula rasa condition that shifts the paradigm of public space in the city by violently penetrating the block of Verdi Square. The monolith here is extruded to the near maximum height in response to the shallowness of the subway tunnel. The monolith is also paired with a covered theatre that suggests a perfect sphere emerging from the ground and a triangular void containing the entrance ramp to the subway. This intervention is perhaps the most generic as the location is by a generic fabric. Therefore, the monument need not work so hard to compete with the surrounding context.

ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT) Primary Land Use One & Two Family Residence Multi-Family Residence (Walkup) Multi-Family Residence (Elevator) Mixed Residential & Commercial Commercial Use Industrial / Manufacturing Transportation / Utility Public Facilities and Institutions Open Space & Recreation Parking Vacant Land

124

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126

4'-0" 26'-0"

120'-0"

4'-0"

-8"

28'-0"

105'

2'-6"

6'-11 3/4"

"

26'-0"

15'-0 "

4'-0"

15'-0 "

28'-0"

23'-4

15'-0

30'-0" 20'-7"

3/4"

1'-0"

85'-0"

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128

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66th & Broadway

Description: “The station at 66th and Broadway opened on October 27th, 1904. It has four tracks and two side platforms.

Recently renovated with a “retro look” makeover, complete with new plaques and tablets in the original 1904 Heins-LaFarge style. The new plaques are made of faience and while they look like they might have been restorations of original work - they are not. The new plaques have the letters “LC” embossed over the “66”; remember, Lincoln Center did not exist in 1904, when the station was opened. The walls are being refinished with white panels, which are actually large mosaics of tiny opalescent tiles. Tan Norman brick surrounds and accents these panels. The ornate ceiling and plaster rosettes around the old light fixtures have been lovingly restored, but the bulb sockets have been covered over.”

66th and Broadway takes advantage of the road medians and places an observatory across Broadway. The curved staircase leading up to the observatory penetrates the monolith and allows the public to experience the bowels of the monolith. From the staircase, the public can see the massive ventilation tower clad with sound-proofing skin that suggests a ribbed texture. The observatory is paired with a void into the subway that is forty-foot high at the entrance.

ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT)

Primary Land Use One & Two Family Residence Multi-Family Residence (Walkup) Multi-Family Residence (Elevator) Mixed Residential & Commercial Commercial Use Industrial / Manufacturing Transportation / Utility Public Facilities and Institutions Open Space & Recreation Parking Vacant Land

130

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Site Plan

132

30'-0" 15'-0"

15'-0"

60'-0"

9'-4 1/4"

1'-0

120'-0"

15'-

"

0"

17

43째 156.

30.1

'-0

" 6'-

3째

11

/2"

90

'-0

"

60'-0"

44'-5"

59 .87 째

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Columbus Circle

Description: “The station at 66th and Broadway opened on October 27th, 1904. It is a local station with four tracks and two side platforms. The side walls of the station feature large name tablet mosaics and both mosaic and faience plaques of Christopher Columbus’s three ships. A mezzanine underneath provides access to the IND station at Columbus Circle. The downtown platform areas are much larger than necessary for the interchange with the IND. They are deliberately ample to allow for an expansion of this station into a new express stop. The downtown local and express tracks would, under an early 1950s NYCTA plan, weave out to accommodate a new center express platform. The new downtown local platform would be in the bays. Thus this station would have resembled Pennsylvania Station with three platforms. To ensure the bays remained available, the NY Colliseum was set back from the street. As part of this plan the 72nd Street station would become a local stop by walling off the express tracks. The express run would be from Times Square, then Columbus Circle, then 96th Street.”

The Columbus Circle monument replaces the previous monument with an observatory.

The monolith is split in the middle and contains an occupiable glass shaft with an elevator.

Outside is a curved ramp and a ceremonial entrance. Instead of being a figural monument, the new monument is an interactive spectacle where the city and the citizens are in charge.

ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT)

Primary Land Use One & Two Family Residence Multi-Family Residence (Walkup) Multi-Family Residence (Elevator) Mixed Residential & Commercial Commercial Use Industrial / Manufacturing Transportation / Utility Public Facilities and Institutions Open Space & Recreation Parking Vacant Land

136

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Site Plan

138

16

4'-

10

1/4

"

30'-0" 15'-0"

1'-

28'-0"

15'-0"

'-0

0"

"

15'-0"

1'-0"

15'-0"

"

25'-6 3/4"

30'-0

7'-0" 1'-0" 7'-0"

120'-0"

28'-0"

11

9.9

0째

6'-2 1/4"

15

20'-0"

30'-0"

50'-0" 100'-0"

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140

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Times Square

Description: “The Grand Central/Times Square shuttle stations and track are part of the Contract I Interborough subway construction which opened on October 27, 1904. The “First Subway” was continuous from City Hall on the east side, up Broadway on the west side, using 42nd St. to get across town. When the two north-south lines were extended as part of the Dual Contracts construction (1915-1918), the crosstown connection was severed and changed into a crosstown shuttle operation.”

The Times Square entrance at 42nd street provides a perfect site for an Urban Monument.

This intervention opens up the ground in front of the Conde Nast tower and insterts the monolith like a skyscraper in the center of 7th ave. On the west side of the monolith is a theatre, while on the opposite side is a series of public bathrooms. In plan these elements constitute a perfect circle. A covered ramp penetrates the monolith and links the sidewalks from east to west.

The Times Square monument erases the traces of the current public space in exchange for more dynamic platforms for recreation.

ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT)

Primary Land Use One & Two Family Residence Multi-Family Residence (Walkup) Multi-Family Residence (Elevator) Mixed Residential & Commercial Commercial Use Industrial / Manufacturing Transportation / Utility Public Facilities and Institutions Open Space & Recreation Parking Vacant Land

142

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Site Plan

144

30'-0" 15'-0"

2'-0"

28'-0"

15'-0"

" 8'-0

26'-0"

68'-1 1/4"

8'-0"

4'-0"

8'-

120'-0"

8'-0 "

0"

"

12

5.6

0째

"

'-0

'-0

16

10

'-4

1/2

"

1'-

15'-0"

7'-3"

80

7'-

7'-3"

0" 6"

15'-0"

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brennan, Joseph. “Abandoned Stations - NYC.” Abandoned Stations. 14 Mar. 2005.

Columbia University. 17 Nov. 2013 <http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/ index.html>.

Conrads, Ulrich. Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1970.

Hays, K. Michael. Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-garde. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2010.

Hejduk, John, and Kim Shkapich. Riga, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal: A Work. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.

“Privately Owned Public Space - New York City Department of City Planning.” Privately Owned Public Space - New York City Department of City Planning. City of New York. 17 Nov. 2013 <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/priv/priv.shtml>.

Rossi, Aldo, Peter Arnell, and Ted Bickford. Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.

Schmidt, Stephan, Jeremy Nemeth, and Erik Botsford. “The Evolution of Privately Owned Public Spaces in New York City.” URBAN DESIGN International 216 (2011): 270-84.

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Sert, J.L., and S. Giedion. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nine Points on Monumentality.â&#x20AC;? Architecture Culture, 19431968: Documentary anthology. Ed. Joan Ockman. [New York]: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, 1993.

Suarez, Richard Anthony. A new life for plazas: Reimagining privately owned public spaces in New York City. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2012.

Tschumi, Bernard. Event-Cities 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2000.

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APPENDIX ii A N E X Q U I S I T E C O R P S E S C H E AT S H E E T

This is the original outline used for the final thesis defense preparation.

Meaning

- This thesis seeks to revisit meaning and signification in architecture.

- Dismissal of postmodernism (historicism, populist)

- Revisit of discourses that were dismissed along with Postmodernism

- Signification, linguistics, meaning

- Extract from this - issues of collective memory, anxiety, ways of reading architecture.

- Goals for architecture

- to explore a continuity of historical tropes

- to promote typology over geometric complexity

- to promote the collective over the individual

- Along with this - reconstitution of what narrative means in architecture.

- limits, modes, ties to other disciplines (literature, art) Narrative

- Word thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thrown around

- Paper architecture, utopia, radical projects

- Narrative is how we experience and read space. Beyond navigation.

- The limits of narrative

- literary devices, allegory, moral, allusions

- intellectual reading of architecture - intellectual affect

- Tie to fiction - the use of fictional narratives in architecture Fiction

- We can say that architecture deals mostly with fiction

- fiction as hypothesis, speculation, alternatives

- difference between real alternative and imaginary alternative (both fictions)

- fiction allows us to put aside real concerns (political, economic, etc)

- focus on fewer aspects

- imaginary alternative - lineage as architecture ad extremum. (dissmissive)

- change of scale of the imaginary alternative - scale of a parable, short story.

- allows an allegorical approach APPENDIX ii

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- explore limits of specific subject matter: here it’s signification, formal readings, ultimately meaning.

Thesis Framework

- Fictional narrative - Detective mystery

- Meta-narrative or meta-thesis - acts as a case study

- meaning within the context of public space, monumentality, primitive forms.

- 3 narratives - Detective - Architect Mr. White - Serial Killer Mr. White

- Detective embodies the collective (perception of architecture)

- inability to solve the mystery and tie everything together alludes to the

public’s inability to read architecture.

- Architect Mr. White embodies the impulse for architects to speculate about

urban conditions - perhaps even a pseudo-positivistic way.

- Serial Killer Mr. White represents the inability to be avant-garde. The quest for

meaning ultimately leads to madness.

Project - Urban Monuments: A Proposal for NYC

- A thesis that addresses monumentality, memory, and architectural agency

within the context of NYC’s spaces.

- Here, Mr. White stands against contemporary modes of designing public space.

- Position on economic and social structure of public spaces.

- Proposes that divorcing the creation of public space from development and

tying it to infrastructure, there is more room for true public space (not privately

owned, that excludes).

- Separation of public space from gentrification or functionalism.

- proposes a redesign of the subway entrances in NYC - beginning with ones already linked to public space.

- Establishes a minimalist grammar that allows for a reducibility of meaning

- tied to primitive forms.

- Grammar plays off architect’s obsession with the monolith (2001) (1-4-9

proportions, mystery, monumentality)

- combinatory logic of the grammar subdues the notion of the icon, but

simultanously preserves the fragments of collective formal memories (primordial forms)

- These urban monuments serve as repositories for public activity.

- They do not exclude, nor serve explicit functions 152

- Formally, they explore: - solid/void - interior/exterior - spectator/spectacle - form/function

- This project situates itself in the lineage of other projects (la vilette, hejduk’s masques) Project - Mystery

- Story takes Mr. White and pushes the fiction to the limit by placing him as a

serial killer/architect.

- His quest for meaning leads to madness.

- He takes this project and turns it into a different way of producing meaning

(murder - Tschumi’s axiom).

- Uses his obsession with proportion and form to choreograph normal people’s

death - enhancing their meaning.

- The story focuses on the detective’s quest to piece together the clues from this project.

- The police discover his apartment and attain all the evidence they need, but

can’t put it together.

- Systems of proportion, choreography, and formal studies are meant to illustrate

a way of signifying.

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154

APPENDIX iii NOTES

Introduction 1. Stephen Koch, “Chapter 1: Beginnings” in The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction (New York: Modern Library, 2003).

2. Ibid., 8-9.

3. Carlo Salzani, “The City as Crime Scene: Walter Benjamin and the Traces of the Detective,” in New German Critique No. 100 (Winter, 2007): 165-187.

4. Ibid., 186.

5. Bernard Tschumi, “Advertisements for Architecture”, Architectural Design 47 (1977): 214—218.

1 Reading Architecture 1. K. Michael Hays, Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010). p. 147 2 Real and Unreal 1. These observations were made following trends in recent architectural publications where the two modes of operating are in practice. Articles ranging from Architect Magazine’s “Architecture to the Rescue” (Sept. 2011) to Reinhold Martin’s “Critical of What?” in Harvard Design Magazine (Spring/Summer 2005) present a wide range of back-andforth revisitations of real versus non-real architectural ambitions in discussion today.

Furthermore, questions of what constitutes an architectural thesis expand this discussion to an educational debate. See Mark Jarzombek, “A Thesis,” Thresholds 12 (Spring 1996): 6-8.

2. In recent years MIT architecture students have developed a tradition of producing highly technical and scientific proposals ranging from infrastructural solutions to productive typologies. See (but not limited to) Masoud Akbarzadeh, Hydropower Cities. Thesis (M.Arch), MIT. DSpace@MIT, 2011.; Catherine Winfield, Autopoietic Landscapes.

Thesis (M.Arch), MIT. DSpace@MIT, 2013.; Carolyn Jenkins, East Boston Buffer. Thesis (M.Arch), MIT. DSpace@MIT, 2013.

3. Manfredo Tafuri, “There is No Criticism, Only History,” Design Book Review 9, 1986, p.

11.

4. Neil Bingham, “On the Brink of a Tumultuous Abyss: Images of Fantasy and Visionary Architecture,” in Fantasy Architecture 1500-2036, ed. Clare Carolin, et al. (London: Hayward Gallery, 2004), p. 12.

5. Martin suggests that revisiting postmodernism can be a productive endeavor when we take it farther than simple representation. Seen in this light, architecture’s notion of utopia APPENDIX iii

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ceases to be an autonomous act, and can engage a broader spectrum of societal concerns, namely power and economics. For Martin’s position, see Utopia’s Ghost (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

6. Rem Koolhaas, “Exodus: or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture,” in S,M,L,XL (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995); John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa - Works 1947-1983 (New York: Rizzoli, 1985); Jimenez Lai, Citizens of No Place (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012); WAI Think Tank, “Narrative Architecture: a Manifesto” in Volume 36 (July 2013): 46.

7. K. Michael Hays and Marrikka Trotter, “Fielding Fictions: A Conversation” in Log 22 (Spring/Summer 2011): 130. An in-depth version of this analysis can be found in Hays’ book Architecture’s Desire (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009).

8. Douglas Darden, “Between Corpus and Corpse” in A+U (July 1988): 12.

9. For examples of Hejduk’s poetry see Such Places as Memory: Poems 1953-1996 (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998); for Darden’s projects see his monograph Condemned Building (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993).

10. WAI Think Tank, “Narrative Architecture: a Manifesto,” 47.

11. Martin, Utopia’s Ghost, xiv 12. An online article based on several research studies concluded that one of the best ways people retain information is through stories. Participants were either told information as facts or within a narrative and the latter proved in most cases to have a better retention rate. See Leo Widrich, “The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story Is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains.” Lifehacker.com, Gawker Media, 12 May 2012.

Web. 3 Paranoia 1. Carlo Salzani, “The City as Crime Scene: Walter Benjamin and the Traces of the Detective,” in New German Critique No. 100 (Winter, 2007): 166.

2. Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992).

3. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Monacelli, 1994).

4. There are numerous accounts of why paper architecture or theory dominated architectural discussions from the 1960s to 1980s. Jeffrey Kipnis attributes it to lack of economic activity in the field while figures like Reyner Banham argue that it was necessary to theorize to bring about an expanded practice. See Kipnis, Perfect Acts of Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001); Banham, “A Black Box: The Secret Profession of Architecture” in A Critic Writes (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996); The abundance of self-reflexive theoretical arguments written at this time can also be seen in anthologies such as Kate Nesbitt’s Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: Architecture 156

Theory from 1965 to 1995 (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996) and K. Michael Haysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Architecture Theory since 1968 (MIT Press, 2000).

4 Representation 1. For complete works of those mentioned see Lai, Citizens of No Place; Wes Jones, Meet the Nelsons (Los Angeles: LA Forum, 2010); Jack Self, Scatterbrain: A Cautionary Tale (London: Speculative Publications, 2010); Hejduk, Such Places as Memory; Roger Connah, Welcome to the Hotel Architecture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998); MOS (Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample), Everything All At Once (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013); Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts (London: Academy Editions, 1994).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baird, George. “Criticality and Its Discontents.” Harvard Design Magazine Fall 2004/Winter 2005 (2004).

Banham, Reyner, and Mary Banham. A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Darden, Douglas. Condemned Building: An Architect’s Pre-Text. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993.

Eisenman, Peter. Houses of Cards. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Celant, Germano, ed. Aldo Rossi Drawings. Milan: Skira, 2008.

Hays, K. Michael., and John Hejduk. Sanctuaries: The Last Works of John Hejduk. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003.

Hays, K. Michael. Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.

Hays, K. Michael. Hejduk’s Chronotope. New York: Princeton Architectural Press [for the] Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1996.

Hays, Michael. “Fielding Fictions: A Conversation.” Log 22 (2011): 137-46.

Hejduk, John, and Kim Shkapich. Riga, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal: A work. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.

Kipnis, Jeffrey. Perfect acts of architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001.

Koch, Stephen. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction. New York: Modern Library, 2003.

Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Monacelli, 1994. Print.

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Lai, Jimenez. Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.

Martin, Reinhold. Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Rossi, Aldo, Peter Arnell, and Ted Bickford. Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.

Salzani, Carlo. “The City as Crime Scene: Walter Benjamin and the Traces of the Detective,” in New German Critique No. 100 (Winter, 2007).

Tafuri, Manfredo. “There is No Criticism, Only History,” Design Book Review 9, 1986 Tschumi, Bernard. The Manhattan Transcripts. London: Academy Editions, 1994.

Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. Print.

Tschumi, Bernard. Event-Cities 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

Widrich, Leo. “The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story Is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains.” Lifehacker.com. Gawker Media, 12 May 2012. Web. 24 Aug. 2013.

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