Ivelisse Ruiz Upward 534 Southtowne Dr Apt U101 South Milwaukee WI 53172 phone 414-758-0016 email ivelisse.ruiz@gmail.com
Ivelisse Ruiz Upward 4817 Gatewood Cir. Apt 1C Ypsilanti MI 48197 phone 414-758-0016 email ivelisse.ruiz@gmail.com
Counterfeit Architecture: Surrogate Bodies
Fall 2008-Winter 2009 - Advisors Perry Dean Kulper, Amy Kulper and Neil Richardson
a look at the self-concept… Psychoanalytic theory describes the concept of ‘the body schema’ - the mental representation one has of oneself, which gradually develops in each individual, encompassing imagination, emotions, thoughts, and its spatial setting - as the center of integration of a human being. According to this theory our bodies and movements are in constant interaction with our surroundings; “the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly.” Under this understanding, no ‘body’ can be detached from its domicile and no space can be separated from the unconscious image of the perceiving self. Consequently, the body is considered as the site of the senses and the medium of the mind. Echoing our peripheral world, this new emergent body concretizes the Self as the dissolution of the physical body. This view of the physical being as fragmented parts dates as early as 15th Century when Rene Descartes conceived the idea of the Cartesian Man (the body fragmented through its senses), and to the invention of modern anatomy in the 16th Century. However, it is not until the end of the 19th Century and the 20th Century that the concept of body fragmentation was understood as an important and defining aspect of the embodiment. This emphasized the significance of the whole and its parts and produced a “new and finely nuanced conception of the body as a complex form of mediation.” Contemporary body criticism conceptualizes the body through the lenses of phenomenology, psychoanalysis and cognitive/artificial intelligence. These theorizations argue that the corporeal boundaries have dissolved in our contemporary experience. In turn, we are confronted with the critical problem of rethinking what is the experience of human embodiment in our world today. If the body is no longer just a corporeal manifestation, but instead a combination of disperse experiences, how should the image of the body be understood in relation to space? Moreover, how can space translate this existential shift in order to engage with these aspects of embodiment?
Body Blankett - Dissolution of the physical boundaries of the body through suffocation and erasure.
Spatial constructs, therefore, play an important role in the reconciliation between the body and the world. “In its way of representing and structuring action and power, societal and cultural order, interaction and separation, identity and memory, architecture is engaged with this fundamental existential questions”, to the extent that the image of self cannot be separated from its spatial and circumstantial condition. As a result, this nuanced spatial-body assemblage proposes architectural design as an integral component of human existence that gives presence to invisible aspects of our bodily existence. The question is how could, architecture engage, not merely reflect, this opaque interiority of our bodies? How can it become the medium of embodiment? who/what is the reconstructed body/self? To inquire for the reconstruction of a body is not to ask for the redefinition of what constitutes to be a human being, but to question preconceived notions of inner-subjectivity, self-consciousness and self-authorship in relation to spatial production. It is important to recognize that the terms ‘body’ and ‘Self’ encompass a broad range of connotations and positions. For the work of this thesis, both terminologies refer to the combination of surrogate objects and subjects that constitutes the essence of individuality and the internal aspects that render a sense of being and make up the bodily existence. It renders the body, not as a physical (corporeal) object, but as an elaborate combination of pliable transformations which continually mark and transform space.
Theories about bodies and selves consider to be divisible, boundary diffusible, unifiable, possesable, and introspectable. Each theoretical condition creates a replica, a double and surrogate of our physical bodies. In this sense, self-constructs represent a counterfeited form of our body’s interiority. These ‘theoretical molds’ of human experience are by no means determinate, as it is impossible to talk about the self as a ‘matter of fact’ condition. However, the fact that it could be conceptually represented denotes that the interiority of the body is sufficiently determinate to be grasped as an architectural construct.
Leg Brace - Dissolution of the physical boundaries of the body through the objectification and commodification of the human body.
body dissolution and counterfeits…
Drawing from these concepts, this thesis targets two central conditions: the first is the concept of body dissolution proposed in the human sciences that establishes the dislocation of the single standardized body as representative of the self and proposes a new body with no physical boundaries; the second refers to the idea of objects and images that conceptually replicate the body and establish them as counterfeited reconstructions of the body. Under this theorization, the body is understood as an accumulation of both its own parts and those of others, attaining its integrity through the assemblage of surrogate objects and subjects. Thus, the thesis seeks to reconstruct a counterfeit spatial condition that frames the body with no boundaries as an architectural strategy, creating an artificial framework that reconstructs a new territorial extension for the body. This kind of reconstruction mediates between presence and absence, providing asylum to the body from its physical boundaries by revealing its subjective extensibility. By asking for this reconstruction of the ‘body’ is not to question whether or not this new extensibility creates a better or worst body. Instead, asking for a new understanding of its limits implicates rethinking the physical surroundings we design. This thesis pursues an architectural condition that serves as a medium of negotiation between the body and its external surroundings; setting fort the body and self as analogs to architectural design and not as design criteria. Three elements were established in the work as means to guide the translation the dislocated body into spatial conditions. These elements were framed as characters, each which served as means to look at the subjective and situational bodies in order to bring them to the surface. the schizophrenic - This character focuses on introverted reality, and challenges preconceived notions of boundaries, territory and space. According to Louis Sass in “The Consciousness Machine”, the extreme sense of autonomy, inwardness, selfintimacy and centeredness are characteristic of both schizophrenia and modern selfhood. This creates a new understanding of self-perception. To this end, the schizophrenic character concentrates in the translation of this subjectivized and situational reality into tangible space. the commodified - This character looks at the social personality and its modes of conformity, it questions the autonomous individual defined by self-consciousness and the cultural resonance of objects and commodities. It also explores the idea of the body as a possession and object, as the individualized subject of modernity became an instrument and product of process. To the extent that the self becomes objectified it produces a body that can be possessed and handed over. “The idea of the self as its own creation renders the self as analogous to a machine, something that can make marketable goods, including itself; this self-authored commodity is in control of itself, and it is perfectible.” This conceptualization of the self in complete ownership of himself and reveals a body oriented towards self-fashioning; an author of himself, a property and possession not too different from any other commodity. the ventriloquist - Finally, this character looks at the phenomenon where the “I” becomes personified and ambiguous. In this sense, ventriloquism is interpreted as a kind of translation and authorship, where the dummy becomes the translator and author of the words said. This allows for the effacement of the self, retaining a repressed presence that links him back to the dummy. It creates a counterfeited reality that is dependent upon the original ‘act’. This reciprocal connection of the self and the counterfeit scrutinizes emancipation and effacement; questions authorship and veracity. Thus, ventriloquism becomes a matter of displacement and dislocation. Much like an autobiography, the ventriloquist tells a story that is self-edited and self-constructed to echo a reality that is self-authored. In this way, ventriloquism offers a strategy to displace and/or remove as means to question, and to a certain extent, legitimize a statement.
bsence through
cation through dis
two sites The first site is the dislocated body in which the early explorations were based. This is not a specific body, but rather the idea of the body removed. Using an element that objectified the body, a leg brace, the early explorations recorded, reconstructed and mapped the material evidence of the removed and dislocated body for which this object was made. In this way, the body as site surfaced as a subjective trace revealed through its absence, circumstance, and familiarity.
Reframing the Castt - Working in the translation of the leg brace, the cast was reconstructed through photography and tracing, mapping the material evidence of the removed and dislocated body for which this object was made. The unanticipated readings revealed the subjective body through its absence, making the removal tangible.
replication through contouri
e
The second site was established as the work unfolded due to its parallel aspects with the concept of body dissolution. The disappearing barrier island on the Eastern Shoreline of Virginia, Cedar Island is subject to erosion and floods which constantly displace the island’s physical boundaries. Because of its topography, the transient island shifts position throughout the year. Cedar Island is unusual along the Virginia Eastern Shore because it once was at habited. Today, those houses are abandoned, resembling prosthetic elements to the island that extend its height over the rising ocean and memorialized the island’s domestic lives. The general plan strategy extends the two by seven mile stretch of land and reinterprets it based on programmatic ideas about the body. This strategy provoked the emancipation of certain land formations from their current condition into thematic constructs that both supported and reacted to the theoretical concerns of the work.
Temporal Scaffold d - The hospice and the repository work as a cohesive unit, both functioning as markers of displacement and museum of forgotten bodies. While the hospice serves as refuge and landmark to the orphan houses on the shoreline, the repository reconstructs a new reality for the forgotten objects of the islands’ domestic lives, and frames the scenery of the unattainable and disappearing landscape.
the formal exploration (embodied gestures) The design work began with the translation of the first site. A series of reconstructions and manipulations yield ‘principles’ on how to conceive this process of unmaking as a tangible construct: Absence of the body through relationship; sense of belonging to the body because our knowledge; reframing through multiple translations; creation of a framework to release the body from its physicality; recording, reconstructing and tracing the body as opposed to represent it; the ‘counterfeits’ start to described the original through their material presence offering evidence, or trace, of the material and processes involved, while picking up unanticipated details and readings in addition to the geometry involved in re-forming the objects. These principles suggested alternative architectural strategies in which space could engage with the body responding as an object of embodiment and not as just a backdrop. Making physical the removal of the body (the dissolution), the early design explorations served as means to understand how to get rid off the body in a physical, spatial manner. Building upon the concept of releasing a body from its physical boundaries by creating an artificial framework induced the emancipation of the ground through the manufacture of a false landscape. In turn, the architecture of the landscape became a temporal scaffold that employs forgery techniques, camouflage, and illusion; combining relics and fabrications, in order to mediate fact and fiction. These translations allow the subjective body, the viewer and the island, to surface by relocating the body’s perceptual horizon and his interpretation of boundaries and territories.
Referential Bodies - The architecture of the landscape is conceived in such a way as to manipulate the frame of perception. Much like the ventriloqual body, it frames the body through multiple translations, removal, distancing, reflection, and replicas.
As the work progressed, three main programs emerged taking on the situational conditions of the island and the thematic concerns of the work. Along the east shoreline, a hospice unfolds as a landmark of past lives. This new structure takes on the domestic program of the abandoned houses and locates them as objects of display framed within the new walls of the hospice. Settled as the last place for rest, it memorializes the lives of the now orphan houses by reframing our visual understanding and perception of them. The new structure gives a new live to these domestic symbols of commodity, while creates a marker of the disappearing shoreline. Like the houses, the hospice reconstructs the territory of the outer banks while awaits for the moment in which it too would become and object of display. Along the length of the island between the marsh and the shore, a repository of house objects serves as a marker of displacement, while creates scrutiny through frame vistas of the unattainable landscape. The repository provides a circulation corridor across landscape, creating a space that recedes and contains. As a kind of curiosity cabinet, the repository produces a space that speaks about the past and reconstructs a false reality.
Finally, a series of autobiographical theaters lay across the land. Conceived as a collection of gardens set throughout the landscape, the theater acts as a scaffold of separated individualities. Delineated with mirrors and reflective materials, the theaters reconstruct the visual environment, displacing the body by fragmenting and relocating his perception. In this way, the body is force to reinterpret the surrounding territory, as well as his owned body, because ‘things aren’t what they seem’. Each garden also sets a specific view of the landscape on display, making the body participant of it through reference, memory, and sense of belonging. Some of these gardens have thin steel rods that perform like the wild-grass on the wind along the landscape. These steel rod ‘sculptures’ respond to the natural landscape by rotting with the salt of the ocean, thus marking the temporal quality of live in this island. In addition, they transform the sorrounding spaces through their constant shift in height, shape and location. Other gardens enclose the vastness of the land, by setting the occupant as one within the space and framing the visual conception of them. Finally, the banks on the south end that have already flooded surfaced as a place of becoming (a womb space), in which a disruption was placed as means to reorient the natural formations on the sand and allow them to resurface during low tides.
Forgery, Camouflage and Illusion - As a way to reconstruct our own understanding of the body, the design focuses on techniques of forgery, camouflage and illusion with the intent to create a false reality. This in turn provokes the viewer to question its own reality and his understanding of it. In this way, both the design of the architecture becomes the design of the construct itself, as means to replicate the intentions of the architectural space in a drawings medium.
As these spaces are set throughout the land, they trace the temporal existence of the island’s physical body, and, therefore, function as markers of displacement and material presence. The counterfeit space acts like a diorama, setting the landscape as an object of display and inducing the situational and referential bodies to surface. In this way each spatial condition attempts to carry on an embodied relationship to the body, by reconstructing the visual environment in which the body becomes subject and object as well as content.
Architecture of the Landscape - The landscape becomes a temporal scaffold that employs forgery techniques, camouflage, and illusion; combining relics and fabrications, in order to mediate fact and fiction. These translations allow the subjective body, the viewer and the island, to surface by relocating the body’s perceptual horizon and his interpretation of boundaries and territories. The resulting counterfeit space acts like a diorama, setting the landscape as an object of display and inducing the situational and referential bodies to surface. In this way each spatial condition attempts to carry on an embodied relationship to the body, by reconstructing the visual environment in which the body becomes subject and object as well as content.
Fall 2008 - Professor Jason K. Johnson
Isolation Encampment Los Angeles International Airport
Los Angeles can be described as a city of excess and saturation. Geographical, demographic and economic aspects have created a city crowded with people, cars, infrastructure, advertisement, fashion... In this context, LAX serves as a prototypical example of LA’s accelerated, saturated and excessive culture. The airport, as an institution, has been depersonalized, acting as a threshold where staying ‘plug-in’ with the outside world becomes the primary ambition of its ‘culture’. Assuming these tendencies will continue, people will need a form of detachment and isolation as means to cope and restructure back into the system. This project concentrates in this moment of need for detachment, offering a prototypical settlement that negates the emblematic cultural conditions that have render LA in ‘saturation chaos.’ The encampment proposes an alternate condition of control and regulation that emphasizes individuality and detachment. By means of sensory deprivation and isolation, the colony seeks individual de-saturation through immersion, offering a space in which the visitor deliberately opts for the reduction and removal of stimuli from the senses.
Fall 2007 - Professor Perry Dean Kulper
Transgenic Botanical Gardens Detroit MI
Detroit’s urban fabric has failed to regenerate after the decline of the manufacturing industry. Issues of abandonment served as a catalyst for the exploration of two proto-architectural elements, which initiated the introduction of a new plant ecology onto the site and produced a series of nomadic and transformable programs and spatial logics. Transgenic species of native wild grasses were developed to tolerate and extract toxic contaminants, filtering and detoxifying the ground and buildings. Ecological gardens were designed to occupy the empty lots and serve as harvesting facilities. The abandoned infrastructures were converted into nurseries for the plant seedlings grown in a hydroponics system. These derelict sites were equipped with adaptable surfaces, capable to reassemble and reconfigure in order to catch water, harvest sunlight, accommodate for new programs, mask and frame views, thus transforming the perception of the site at the same time that it is transforming its urban fabric.
Winter 2007 - Professor James Bassett
IIT Natatorium and Athletic Facilities Chicago, Illinois
The site for the IIT Natatorium spans along the train tracks on the northern site of the IIT Campus. This location has rich possibilities due to its physical connection to the train and its location just north of the new student union. The design manipulates the relationship between structural and spanning elements; light and shadow; transparency, translucency and opaqueness. Specifically, it concentrated on the perception of this elements, and the creation of false structural illusions, as means to recreate the atmosphere and ambience of ‘floating in a pool’. Views into the water can be seen throughout serving as a material element. Light is filtered through several floors, adding a transient pattern of light and shadow that reflects into the horizontal surfaces. Catwalks and open spaces were employed throughout making the facilities a lively public space.
Fall 2006 - Prof Ekaterina Velikov
Toledo Fine Arts Library Toledo, Ohio
Trying to challenge the notions of the traditional library, this project takes on an unorthodox approach to programming by reinterpreting spaces through the idea of the fragment. This is meant to reframe the ways we use spaces in the library, assimilating the library program to the user environment, not the user in the library environment. Space-defining fragments: inside/outside, figure/ field, form/content, void/solid, vertical/horizontal, light/shadow, translucent/opaque, fluid/rigid, virtual/physical Program reinterpretation: active landscape space, passive landscape space, public electronic space, collection space, user seating space, special use space, meeting space, staff work space, service space
active landscape space
passive landscape space
public electronic space
collection space
user seating space
special use space
meeting space
staff work space
service space
Spring 2005 - Prof Neil Frankel
US Federal Courthouse - Interior Re-design Rockford, Illinois
The site for this project was an abandoned lot in the center of Rockford’s Downtown. As a way to revitalize the area, the City of Rockford, IL has proposed a series of redevelopment projects, including a United States Federal Courthouse. The intent is to communicate the green spaces in front of the Rock River with the center of the city with a series of new parks, in arrange with a civic room and an exterior auditorium. The project involved the redesign of 30,000 sqft of the interior layout. As part of the design provisions, no modifications to the base building exterior could be done. The shape of the given city room was projected into an atrium space on the ground floor to create a stronger connection with the interior of the building. Public functions were added to the standard program in an attempt to make the facilities accessible to the community. Neutral tones were used throughout in order to create a sense of tranquility and comfort, while red was utilized to accentuate the courts. Industrial-like materials were employed to bring back the nostalgia of the industrial days of the City of Rockford, while new materials were introduced as a way to welcome the future. Glass was used around the entire facility in an effort to express the accessibility, purity, and transparency of the United States Justice System.
Spring 2004 - Prof Ravin Gunaratne
East Side Wellness Center Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The site for the Fitness Center spans the existing bike path and connects it to the entertainment district along North Avenue on Milwaukee’s East Side. The site has rich possibilities for urban design in the context of its district, and for landscape design as it engages the slope down to the bike path running about 20 feet below street level. The site is characterized by its physical connection with the bike path/ skating/ jogging trail that winds along the old C&N railroad. The bike path splits the site into two portions, creating the opportunity for multiple entrances and to separate the different functions of the building into two sections (public and private). A curved spine was used through the building to establish a connection between the two sites, providing entrances to the building from three of the main streets and the bike path. The main circulation of the building was located along the spine communicating all the facilities in the building. A clear definition of public, private and commercial spaces was established by their separation in different volumes. The new fitness center will count with an internet cafe, skate and bike rental, a public exterior ice rink (during winter), a public plaza (during summer), pool, spas, and terrace solarium, among many other facilities.
Fall 2006 Prof Ekaterina Velikov
Donald Judd Sculpture Garden and Outdoor Amphitheater Nichols Arboretum University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Fall 2006 Prof Ekaterina Velikov
Arboretum Welcome Center Nichols Arboretum University of Michigan Ann Arbor
As-Built documentation for the National Park Service US Department of Interior 2002-2004 Engineer Luis Pumarada
Puente Rio Hondo (Bridge No. 339) PR 156 Spanning Rio Hondo Dorado Puerto Rico 1876, Comerio Puerto Rico 1909
Designed by Miguel Martinez de Campos, chief engineer of the Public Works Bureau of the Spanish colonial government in Puerto Rico, and fabricated by the Belgian firm Cia. participation Belge, the Reyes Catolicos bridge (Rio Hondo Bridge) provided the first highway crossing over the lower part of De la Plata River. In 1899 the bridge was damaged by a hurricane, the year after the United States invaded the island. The two spans that survived were modified and relocated. One of them became Puente Río Hondo, while the other was lost several decades ago. Puente Río Hondo is a prime example of the truss type called the “Eiffel system” in France and Belgium, “X” truss in Spain, and Double Warren in the United States. At a national level, it is a rare example of an 1870s European style wrought iron bridge with riveted connections and a domed wrought iron deck plate floor system. The riveted x-web joists that support the domed wrought iron deck plates are unique in Puerto Rico. The Río Hondo bridge carried the first highway access to several central mountain towns over the Hondo river, a tributary of the middle Plata, improving the profitability of the region’s tobacco production.
Fall 2007 Prof Peter Osler
Team - Ivelisse R Upward, Ryan Horsman, Aggie Drelich and Stephen Killion
Residential Landscape Design Proposal Illustrated Site Plan
Spring 2001 Prof Jose Munoz
Iglesia de la Marina Exploded /Cutaway Axonometric Projection (48”x 84””) Mayaguez, Puerto Rico
Graphite
Drawing Duplicate of Albrecht Durer Study of Drapery 1508
Watercolor
Guajataca, Puerto Rico Watercolor
As built drawing - Auto Cad and Adobe Illustrator
Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) West Corner2260 Hayward St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Cedar wood and Brushed Aluminum 1:1 Finished Prototype Group Members - Cecilia Rousell and Ivelisse Upward
Fish on a Board - Firepit Prototype
Digital Illustration Winter 2008 - Prof Perry D Kulper
X-Rayed Eyes
Johannes Vermeer replica erasure of a Ink over Mylar, Winter 2008 - Prof Perry D Kulper
Forgotten Efforts - The Music Lesson