tracingGRADE

tracingGRADE: narratives in parallel acts a STORMFRONT THESIS

By Lisa Sauve

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Contents

What volume number do I assign to this work. Is it somewhere in between where I’ve been before and where this thesis may have existed before I discovered it. Numerous factors can sit before and after the creation of this volume. Imbedding it in the middle. The circumstances of sites prior to this volume. The creation of related projects both personally and within the discipline. This indeed then sits not as volume one but sometime thereafter.

The table of contents notes the process and deliverables of this portion of the thesis. As an artifact in itself to the project, all of the works are deciphered and expanded on as a way of reflecting and reciting the requirements of the thesis sequence.

Much like the way the thesis collects and composes pieces together, this book collects all of the works, processes and reflections into one entity to showcase how the different elements relate through discussion, creation and adjacencies.

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-lisauve Ann Arbor, MI 12|08|10

Abstract

6

Concept | Polemic

8

Lexicon

12

Site | Circumstance | Situation

Detroit, MI

18 20

Hashima Island

22

Picher, OK

24

North Brother Island, NYC

26

Astoria Diving Pool

38

Program

30

Technique

34

Schedule | Time line

38

Paradigm Map | Precedents

40

Design

40

Cross-Disciplinary

46

Texts

52

Case

56

Postscript

60

House Demo-set

62

Blog Posts

66

Sketchbook

74

Review Transcripts

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Abstract Paragraph 1: Briefly situate the thesis within its context, circumstance, underlying assumptions and relevant disciplinary discourse.

Paragraph 2: Define the question(s) that your thesis will explore and briefly speculate how the work intends to broaden the scope of our disciplinary knowledge.

Paragraph 3: Describe your intended approach and methodology, specifying the architectural techniques and strategies that you will deploy to explore the thesis. What manipulations of form, program, space, effect, atmosphere, materiality, representation etc., might activate the conceptual provocations of your thesis.

Paragraph 4: Briefly describe the artefacts that you intend to produce throughout the process.

NB: Be prepared to revise this draft continually throughout the thesis development seminar, as your research and projects feed back against your initial ideas.

Lexicon From each reading, you will distil two salient terms, one topic-based and one that is descriptive or active. The terms you choose should be ones that you will consider as seminal to your thesis development. You will then use both the article and other sources/observations to actively evolve a definition or series of definitions for the term.

Choose strong words that can activate an architectural thesis. Examples of such terms are as follows: (topic based terms): Ground. Site. Atmosphere. Ecology. Shelter. Context. Infrastructure. Landscape. Geography.

Energy. Surrounds. Scope. Feedback. (descriptive/active): Registration. Pulse. Lucent. Engrained. Exaggerated.

Imbedded. Contested. Energized. Surrounding. Amplify. Harness. Situated. Atmosphering. Intense.

N.B. This, of course is a minimum requirement to the summer portion of this seminar. If there are other readings that you are doing on your own, you are encouraged to derive additional terms for the lexicon. The evolving definitions should form a key component of your blog entries.

The lexicon has been a rich exploration of the terms of engagement informing the thesis. Informed by areas of interest as well as specific readings pertaining to the thesis group and the individual thesis, these terms have been defined precisely how they will operate and perform in regards to the specific thesis. Since the thesis is richly informed by the written word, terms within the lexicon have been selected with this in mind.

Site | Circumstance | Situation In the expanded field of concern for STORMFRONT, site is not merely a simple and static geographical coordinate. Instead, its definition must be expanded to define and frame the situation at hand. Using description, capture, discussion, searching, revealing, observation, and the like, site is opened to further scales, times, paces, locations, situations, and understandings. Taking cues from the “Eidetic Operations� as described by James Corner, and the charged techniques of notations as argued by Stan Allen, we will be using site to frame a thesis.

These two views offer inclusion of senses and situation, as well as the anticipatory and the projective respectively.

Key to this exercise is the demonstration of what factors are defining site , and the modes of representation that best demonstrate the site qualities, components, and potentials.

The site project began as a speculative abstract about when and what typology the thesis would be situated within. The site as thesis project revealed more about the way the thesis was looking at site through the techniques of making and the abstract ideas into physical form. Through the conversations of the presentation it became apparent that the works was more engaged in a narrative tone and multiple sites rather than modes of notations that reveal the details of one site.

Program Paragraph 1: Define the role of program relative to the thesis. Explain the capacity of your program through one of the following: Ideological, Rhetorical, Gatherer / Collector, Typological Describe how the program will operate and its relative instrumentality and agenda within the thesis. Explain how your choice and interpretation is significant and appropriate to your thesis. Develop a set of terms that will describe the program.

Paragraph 2: Define the role of the client(s) in the thesis, especially as relative to the author. The client(s) should be considered as one of the following: User, Audience, Witness, Accomplice Describe the identity and culture of the client(s) or communities impacted by or having agency in the thesis – elaborate on their values, needs, behavioral norms, physical ability, social and spatial patterns, location in time, etc. Explain how your choice and interpretation is significant and appropriate to your thesis.

Paragraphs 3-5: Develop a specific outline brief for the program. If the program is a building or group of buildings, your brief should include a list of use and space requirements. If the program does not include the design of built form, then your brief should clearly define the performance of the program, and elaborate on the development of script and set.

Although a struggle through multiple iterations, the program is now informing how the project will operate in conversation with itself. This is then different than the techniques engaged in making and exploration.

Illustrations: Include 3-5 images that might visually support or create a counterpoint to the written text. The role of the images may be to define the mood, character and tone or they could include diagrams or notations of activities or organizational strategies. At least one of the illustrations should be an original work (diagram, photograph, montage etc.). Consider the graphic impact of illustrations relative to text, as support, counterpoint, expansion.

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Technique Discuss and demonstrate techniques for the manipulation of form, program, site, space, effect, atmosphere, materiality, representation etc., which will activate the conceptual provocations of your thesis. Discuss how the recitation of these techniques will aid in your transition from research to design and why these techniques are appropriate to the overall thesis. Briefly describe the artifacts that you intend to produce throughout the design process. Use images and diagrams to illustrate this section.

Technique is two fold process for the thesis, there is the technique of making as well as the technique of writing. To believe it is to see it so the artifacts being made can emphasize the works being written. Practices in literary techniques help to inform ways to strengthen the way the narrative operates.

Schedule | Time Line Create a work-plan that schedules your time from analysis through design experimentation, early design, design development and production. Record the aims and intentions of each stage of the process relative to your central thesis, and establishing goals and strategies to accomplish your work.

This also helps to know what to prepare and what discussions to anticipate between critics.

Paradigm map

Case

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Having begun an entrée into your thesis area, you will now enter a period of intensive research into your thesis paradigm – that is, its framework of influences, theories, philosophies, literatures, design precedents, and the like. By the end of this project, you should be able to identify and discuss intelligently the ‘dominant paradigm’ within which your thesis resides, and be aware of whether you are operating within that dominant paradigm or proposing a ‘paradigm shift’. As your work continues the map may expand, contract, or alter, but its basis and core will be revealed and defended now.

In order to do this work, you will have to intensively research: read strategically, follow threads and trajectories, consider shaping forces and the range of influences. You may not be able to read the full texts of the literature that you gather before the map is submitted, however, you should find enough information to be able to identify the primary ideas of each work and how it relates to the others in your purview. Your paradigm map schema must identify and include precedents of design, cross-disciplinary precedents (cultural activities, institutions or phenomena) and texts. Your primary concern will be to identify the ideas and works and to map them relative to each other. You will seek and develop a graphic technique appropriate to the collected elements to organize, diagram and map the ideas and precedent works you gather, developing the research into a coherent drawing – the Paradigm Map.

The Paradigm Map will be developed collaboratively in groups of two or three, with students in the class who have like interests and trajectories. As a small group, you will be able to divide up reading and research work.

However, each individual student is to graphically locate their thesis within the shared paradigm map.

Develop the graphics of the map in an iterative way. The map should be done either digitally or in a medium that can allow it to grow, mutate and develop over time. Like the blog, the paradigm map will not be entirely complete for the deadline, as it will expand and may reorganize as your thesis develops, so consider this to be a working document. However, its structural and graphic logic must be established, and a substantial body of works should be documented, so that, while momentarily incomplete, it can read as a substantial and completed drawing at the time of the deadline.

This projects strengths were again revealed not through the gathering and annotating of a collection of texts but rather through the making and transforming of an object through the theory that these texts instigated.

Some theses were more dominant in the project than other and the conversation between each thesis with the encyclopedia could have been more developed. The process did seem to help develop the next step in generative process for each of the projects.

For this instance of defending the thesis you will literally develop a case both as an object and as an argument for the thesis. A seemingly simple noun referencing containment, surfacing, instances, and situations, case finds its presence in numerous specific objects. Such examples include: briefcase, suitcase, iphone case, cigarette case, jewelry case, legal case (like a dossier), casement (like for a window), casing (like for ammunition, or a sausage), etc.

Beyond such objects, case can also find itself with other inflections: casing the join, or a case of the jitters, amongst others. As such, the work can be interpreted with some fluidity with the aspiration to put forth an object that can discuss both the site and program of the thesis, as well as to argue for the thesis itself.

The creating of the case called into question what is the case doing for the thesis rather than reflecting an abstract idea under which the thesis may or may not operate. The case then became a toolkit for the thesis giving it leverage as a way of making the thesis perform.

House as thesis This is a design project done individually that plays out the interests developed over the summer in a distilled piece of design work. In chess, an opening gambit is the first move in which the player makes a sacrifice, typically a pawn, for the sake of a compensating advantage later in the game. The first project you arrive with in September will be your opening gambit, prompting an initial stance and design probe into the territory. A sacrificial project, a way in to the work. This move can also be decisive, one that helps to set the tempo and outcome for the year.

Take this effort seriously, recognizing that its best attributes and questions may become critical, but recognizing that the more ambitious effort, where flawed, will only yield deeper fruit – and where work runs awry, it will find new traction in the seminar and studio discussions. The House as Thesis is simultaneously open to the definition of the term ʻhouseʼ, yet confounded by literal scale of a house (approx range 30sf-3000sf). The thesis as a house.

The house as thesis seemed to explore more of the ecological approaches to site and its ramifications over the cultural and physical lifespan of a building. While the cultural and physical lifespan of a place still exists within the thesis the atmospheric and ecological tendencies of the scientific nature have been replaced by more language oriented concentrations.

Demo set Given these interpretations of demo- turn back to your House as Thesis project. Create a DEMO SET for this project by red lining and noting on 1/4 scale versions of your drawings and on 1-3 photographs printed on sheets the same size as the 1/4 scale drawings. Respond to criticism, expose your own opinions, question the graphics, expose the strengths and weakness, demonstrate the new ideas, and determine what stays and what goes. More specifically, at a minimum, each student should: Record the essence of the review conservation. Reflect on the content. Was it how you wanted your project to be discussed? How did your verbal cues help or hinder the communication of your ideas? Which drawings received the most attention?

Analyze your methods of design. How does the way you worked demonstrate a method for design? How did the process lead to the resultant?

Call out / Circle the most powerful design moves in demonstrating your interest as shown in the house.

Evaluate the representation techniques. How else could the drawings be read? Point out what was clear? Underscore what fell away or went unnoticed?

Sketch ideas for what the next iteration could be Demo the house.

Write a 200 word reflection

This work helped to be critically engaged and refelexive of the work on a continual level. While as a first pass, it began to call to question the players at work within the thesis that could amplify the argument and create a solid foundation for the thesis to be situated. While the house did not continue on, strategies of sites, investigations and time have carried through while being informed by key players within the discourse along the way.

Blog posts Each student will initiate and create a thesis blog. This is a public record of your research space and a metaconstruct of the thesis and its extensions, projected publicly into the world. Consider the name of your blog – your thesis will change and evolve over time. Organize the blog as will suit your work and consider the different spaces of information management and connection that may foster deep conversations emanating from the work. Use the blog to organize notes on the texts you read, have links to relevant web sites, collect images, observations, critical texts, precedent projects, as well as to test out research and document evolving thesis work.

The blogs have been a way to engage on a public platform. Informing each individual of the avenues of research and investigation of the peers. The blog was able to operate as a storage capacity for instances possibly relevant to the thesis as well as more in depth research and reflections on avenues in which the thesis is engaged.

Sketchbook The sketchbook works much like the case though more so in the realm of architecture and its discourse. As the case is supportive of the collection of the assets of the sites, the sketchbook collects the ideas, thoughts, notes, remarks, mistakes, assumptions, accounts, projects and readings of the thesis and its specific process to the works of the individual thesis. The act of collecting in one place and the ability for it to be a transportable object gives flexibility to the thesis as it may evolve and describe itself in new places at obscure times.

Review notes | Transcripts Throughout the semester the reviews help to address what information about the thesis is coming across clearly and what portions may need more refinement and explanation.

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Abstract

Through tying together techniques of fiction, narrative, traces, and taxonomy the layers reveal nodes of inter-relations otherwise unable to unravel under the rational lens of architecture as the sole entity. By overlaying what seem to be disparate parts from multiple sources through a technique not of notation or graphics but of physical form and through the narrative that shapes them, the lens’ begin to obscure and reveal new connections that produce new ways of seeing what were once placed in solitude because of a sole and prominent characteristic. While things may have at once seemed irrelevant, now are emergent.

Through collecting information, stories, images, maps and histories about places and spaces that seem to have a blanket association with a single characteristic the less than apparent connections will begin to emerge to help understand new linking resources to aide in architectures approach towards the social, cultural and built world. The juxtaposition presented between sites, time, artifacts and stories can relay ideas of not one ideology but the synthesis of many.

The thesis will appear as a atlas corresponded by the narrative of a places. The atlas will embody the collective narrative and its accumulations of pieces as it develops. A place where the author manipulates his stories and information to go so far as to imply fiction informed by apparent truths while adding and displacing facts to amplify the argument. These atlas will then be developed through individual sites as a series of artifacts and may be expressed in a series of photographs, artifacts (debris, remnants, materials), and texts that are then overlaid with the new approach to terrain, ruin, and traces /imprints of time and activity. Through the atlas and artifacts, a new way of representing these site will call forth not the physical but metaphysical, not the environment but the atmosphere, not the history but the stories and connections of these places.

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Site analysis, embodied questions of authenticity in the formation of a narrative.

Concept | Polemic

I’ll begin first with these new explorations of literary techniques:

Dr. Seuss coined the word “nerd” in his 1950 book “If I ran the Zoo”. It is now commonly used in pop-culture to define an insult to someone’s social skills or to describe someone excessively interested in a technical subject. While it once existed along side other imaginary descriptors such as wumbus, vipper, lerkim and squitsche, it has now been adopted into a real word when once imagined.

Of all the English words set has the most definitions of them all, over 100. The word play of Perec’s “Species of Spaces” builds upon the word space to define numerous adjacent terms within the embodied term space. Set though, exists by itself as a word that is reinvented and utilized in numerous situations.

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Ernest Vincent Wright composed one of the earliest and lengthy lipograms, a novel containing 50,000 words not using the letter E. Based on the letter frequency alphabet E is the most frequently used letter in the English language, removing it presents difficulty and skill.

Invention, addition, utilization, removal. Within the practice of literature, the boundaries have been expanded then accepted. Expanding the boundaries of how we engage in the practice begins with stretching its parameters to its limits. The work then moves from literature to site situations.

By bringing attention to these non-sites across different landscapes, it will reveal to the profession the broader context and discourse outside of itself. By acclimating ourselves with adjacent practices we are then able to handle new programs and social complexities that architecture has before been unable to deliver. While all these sites apparently end with the same characteristic of terrain vague the traces of their coming to be may be quite different. Through these traces and variables, common places and divergence are amplified. These places situated for thesis are once removed from architecture being cast out and neglected, this brings them back into the conversation not as a ruin but an active engagement to the ellipses... of after the built form.

In the practice of engaging a thesis its it to propose to situations of engaging the discipline. So we define the two types of engagement; the pursuit and the recognition. The pursuit is a situation in which institutions search for the ideas beyond the current condition and in question to previous assumptions. Michael Speaks describes MoMA’s Origins of the Avant-Garde colloquium as an attempt to “launch another experimental architecture through the reevaluation of the historical”. Another active pursuit of the is the recognition of previous attempts and the re-evaluation, as is the AA’s Design Research Lab, “In a time of momentous restructuring, questions concerning design product and process can only be addressed within an academic framework that understands architecture as a research based business rather than a medium of artistic expression”. These two situations have begun to frame the pursuit of exploration as a reevaluation of the past.

It is a two fold approach to thesis. One that redefines the expectations of thesis as an end result occurring not as proposition of new schemes and details representing the research of the thesis but one that exposes the process of the thesis as a revelatory work in itself that can expose new possibilities. The second approach is that of what the thesis will expose, a new framework to the site analysis. Rather than the collection of the present time and artifacts of the site, it will propose the designer be present within the essence of the site.

Rather than collecting only the tangible and quantitate materials of the site, the process begins with embedding new works of fiction or the removal of irrelevant histories that can transform the site from its beginnings as a way to develop its place.

The site operates through a narrative to showcase emergent conditions between history and artifact.

As Peter Eisenman explains in his essay Diagram: An Original Scene of Writing, “as a generator a diagram is a mediation between a palpable object, a real building , and what can be called architecture’s interiority.” It can then be said that the narrative operates as a diagram to expose the relationships between the site, event, artifact and discourse to generate new associations. Deleuze explores emergence and the diagram in a the scope of a diagrams authenticity, in his essay The Diagram “It is like a catastrophe happening unexpectedly to the canvas, inside figurative or probabilistic data. It is like the emergence of another world….The diagram is the possibility of fact - it is not the fact itself.”

This possibility of the fact, in an emergent world brings down the associations of revealing operations through the diagram as a architectural writing tool for new outcomes. It is through the possibility of fact rather than the defining of fact itself which calls into question the authenticity of the architectural work. Is there a possibility of hard facts when each perspective varies. Robert Somol does caution that it is important to “avoid confining a diagrammatic approach to architecture as the expression of either presumed bio-mathematical imperatives or socio-economic inevitabilities, and understand architecture rather as a discursive material field of cultural-political plasticity. To do otherwise would be to return to the inadequately diagrammatic options first outlined by Rowe (in terms of formal or analytical ‘truth’) and Alexander (operational or synthetic ‘truth’).”

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As history is written by the winner, the question of truth and reality is always compromised. Both the diagram and the author cannot be trusted as the sole sources of truth in an atmosphere of architectural engagement. Stan Allen marks the compromise as two factors informing the overall, as an “index doubly marked: by the definiteness of physical contact and by the uncertainty of interpretation.” The physical work of making and the speculative work of imaginative narratives play against and with each other while mingling with factors outside of architecture one the theory is placed on the ground in active duty. It is with the multiple factors that the emergent work engages.

Within the work of tracingGRADE it is about uprooting a multitude of narratives, artifacts, histories and conditions that may be subtle by themselves. Through the diagrams organization of a narrative, this pieces begin to work in conversation with each other rather than existing only in adjacencies. Easterling remarks that these factors are agents in operation. “It is possible to understand sites as separate agents that remotely affect each other-that is, the way one can affect point C by affecting points A and B. It is also possible to describe the amplification of a simple move across a group of separate agents, or to describe their parallel or serial sequencing. This architecture is not about the house but rather about housekeeping. It is not be about triangles and tauruses or motion trajectories, but about timing and patterns of interactivity, about triplets and cycles, subtractions and parallelism, switches and differentials”. By codifying these agents together the emergence of the narrative is revealed. It is the simultaneous parallel acts of engagement with the embedded matrix of relationships that blurs the associations with an individual site and creates a large narrative work.

The relationships are then translated into built objects. The act of making translates the narrative into a tangible object that can reflect the essence of both the place, its emergent connections and its abstract revelations. This is where the work of the thesis can become the thesis itself. Roland Barthes explains how Proust converts his efforts into the work itself, “Proust has given modern writing its epic: by a radical reversal, instead of putting his life into his novel, as we say so often, he makes his very life into a work for which his own book was in a sense the model”. In this same way the thesis can form a new model and methodology for exploration in the expanded field of architecture through the act of making the work itself. Through its embodied techniques and informing principals the outcome is emergent of its active agents.

The ability then to combine the scope of literature at large with the rigor of built artifact expands the discourse beyond its current practices. It makes the case that we have moved so far through the expanded field of architecture that the essence of work is tied right back to the language we speak and the objects we hold, and those simple pieces still have much more to contribute to the discipline.

Lynn, Greg“In the Wake of the Avant-garde,” in Assemblage. 29 pp118.

Speaks, Michael. “Which Way Avant-garde?,” in Assemblage: No. 36. pp. 86.

Eisenman, Peter “Diagram: An Original Scene of Writing” pp 27.

Deleuze, Gilles. “The Diagram” in The Deleuze Reader. pp 194-199.

Somol, Robert. “Dummy Text, or The Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture” in transcrição. pp178.

Allen, Stan. “Trace Elements” in Tracing Eisenman. pp 51.

Easterling, Keller. “Introduction” in Organization Space. pp 2.

Barthes, Roland. “Death of the Author” pp 2.

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Lexicon That point is not made in any of the printed words in the text, but it is expressed through the words, in their relationships and in the distance that separates them. 311 Foucault “What is Author” If he wants to express himself, at least he should know that the internal “thing” he claims to “translate” is itself only a ready made dictionary whose words can be explained (defined) only by other words, and so on ad infinitum 4 Barthes “Death of the Author” There are two literary techniques I outline to define a way of working through the narrative; literary tropes and rhetorical modes.

Literary Tropes Styles of literature that works in creating a figure of speech that sets a tone and technique to the way the narrative operates.

Metonymy, Irony, Metaphor, Synecdoche, Antanclasis, Allegory 12 |

Rhetorical Modes Types and styles also known as the modes of discourse.

Narrative, Description, Argument, Exposition

Author Someone who has control over the context and creation of a piece of work. To cause or possibly create the beginning of something. Co-Author would then be a creation between two or more people blurring the identity of any one creator of the object.

Narrative A story as a sequence of event reporting the details of the happenings. A narrator is then one that tells the story but may not be the one creating the story, thus more passive than an author.

Parallel Always running along side each other without the possibility of convergence. Share similar path and characteristics of a path which makes them relatable to each other.

Parallax It is the apparent change in position such as when the viewer moves it seem that the object has moved as well.

This observation is then based off perceptions rather than facts of quantity and dimensions.

Acts Something done: doing something: part of play: Doing something that makes an impact. As part of a larger whole, such as a division in a play to define a portion that tells a part of the story.

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Artifact Object made by human: foreign substance Method-dependent result: something that appears to exist because of the way an object or data is examined, e.g. a form of behavior that is indicated by a behavioral test Site Position something: to locate something in a particular place or position. To see and situate a context around a particular place.

Sight Faculty of seeing: act of seeing: the perception of something using the visual sense: range of seeing: the range or field of vision. Defined both by the science of the optical field and operations of the eye as well as the perception of the mind and the communication of the two together.

Analysis Close examination: the examination of something in detail in order to understand it better or draw conclusions Separation into components: the separation of something into its constituents in order to find out what it contains, to examine individual parts, or to study the structure of the whole Fact Something known to be true: something that can be shown to be true, to exist, or to have happened Truth or reality of something: the truth or actual existence of something, as opposed to the supposition of something or a belief about something Piece of information: a piece of information, e.g. a statistic or a statement of the truth Fiction Literary works of imagination: work of fiction: untrue statement Defining something beyond the boundaries of truth, it may be created from a set of truths but in a new arrangement may misguide the truth and turn it into something lacking truth.

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Trace The last details or faint remnants signifying a more significant presence previously.

Grade On the ground and the measured gradient of the surface. Upon the skin of the earth where things may be laid and collected, from here layers are created that can be skimmed to find the previous grade of a previous time.

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stormfront lexicon

James Corner : Eidetic Operations Topic: Occupation To be embodied within the connections of a place and the events that occur have direct effect between the two connected parties.

1 a : an activity in which one engages 2 a : the possession, use, or settlement of land :occupancy 3 a : the act or process of taking possession of a place or area : seizure Desc/Active: Withdrawal To move into something and later remove from the situation because of new and unforeseeable circumstances.

1 a :removal from a place of deposit or investment 2 a : social or emotional detachment 3 a : the act of drawing someone or something back from or out of a place or position

Robert Smithson : Tour Passaic, NJ Topic: Ruin “That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is-all the new construction that would eventually be built, This is the opposite of the “romantic ruin” because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built”.

Exposing ruins with a new perspective give them value beyond the romantic notions in which they are perceived.

Desc/Active: reflection “That monumental parking lost divided the city in half, turning it into a mirror and a reflection – but the mirror kept changing places with the reflection. One never knew what side of the mirror one was on.”.

To mirror something and see its double not as a copy but in reverse, a new perspective on the same thing.

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Manuel De Landa : Geoplogical History Topic: hinterland While apparently removed from influences or influencing other locations, its removal gives it provocative implications from imbedding it within the sites it is removed from.

1. remote country region: a region that is remote from cities or their cultural influence 2. land adjacent to water: the land that lies next to coastline or a river Desc/Active:intensify To be able to generate something greater than its parts, the strength of the assemblage.

1. make or become greater: to become, or make something become, greater or stronger 2. increase effort or concentration: to do something with greater effort or more activity, or become more concentrated

Keller Easterling : Introduction Topic: Temporal Components A definitive time in which you can operate in the quantitative works which you can locate yourself along the line.

- relating to time: relating to measured time - brief: lasting only a short time - of this world: relating to life in the world, not to spiritual life A piece that exists or existed at one time to a larger entity. Can be interjected at different times along the temporal line as ways of fluxing the engaging pieces. part:a part of something, usually of something bigger vector:one of a set of vectors whose combination resultant is another vector Desc/Active: Housekeeping The act of keeping up a condition that already exists rather than allowing it to fall into disrepair. household maintenance:the maintenance of a household, or the range of tasks involved in this management of property: the management and upkeep of property for a business or other organization

Stanford Kwinter : Wilderness Topic: Outside Beyond a defined perimeter of engagement. Inside as a place of stability then outside is an unstable place of the unexpected outcomes.

1. beyond the boundary of something: located on or beyond the outer surface or edge of something 2. beyond immediate environment: happening, existing, or originating in places, people, or groups other than your own or those you are used to Desc/Active:Indirectness Moving around and outside of a revealed and proximate path of direction. To weave between the obvious.

1. not in straight line: not in a direct line, course, or path 2. not immediate or intended: not occurring as an immediate or intended effect or consequence Mark Wigly : Recycling Recycling Topic:Body An entity containing an amalgamation of parts within it. The operation of the parts together inform the entity.

1. physical form of human or animal: the complete material structure or physical form of a human being or animal 2. dead human or animal remains: the physical remains of a dead person or animal 3. torso: the main part of the physical structure of a human being or animal, not including the head, arms, or legs.

Desc/Active:dispersed To disregard a central node, spreading throughout to cover more area that possible when concentrated.

1. scatter: to cause something to scatter in different directions, or scatter in this way 2. distribute widely: to distribute something over a wide area, or become widespread 3. cause to disappear: to cause something to disappear, or disappear *all definitions within stormfront lexicon derived from the wonderful open source system brought to this thesis by the wonderful people at bing search

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Site | Circumstance | Situation ...to cause a world that is no longer directly perceptible to be seen via different specialized mediations, it is inevitable that it should elevate the human sense of sight to the special place once occupied... 18 Guy Debord “Society of the Spectacle�

Connection of fenestration detail as the environment passes through the weakest points of construction it can find itself across the building to work its way through weak exits. Passing by the building through slips in the space rather than working all the way through it gives opportunities to grasp portions of the outdoors without allowing it a full invitation to the indoors. Growth spreads and spawns a new skin that weaves its way into the old construction. While the previous construction techniques were adequate for structure they do not collaborate with the site, instead the site finds ways to work with the construction. Grade base falls out. While foundations were once strong this is the point in which the building realizes its connection with the ground and begins to fall into it rather than connect to it.

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The site project began as a speculative abstract about when and what typology the thesis would be situated within. As a place within the time of occupancy as ruin, the middle space is a speculative place of transition.

What happens between is always different in dependence on the other contingencies of site. The model itself mirrors each condition while stitching them together in the middle of transition. The mirror emphasizes the duplicate or reference point not specifically exact but instead its opposite and only as a projection rather than a tangible object. The stich implements the intermingling events that occur between the polar ends of an architectural existence. How these events overlap, inform and project futures and pasts of the project inform the details of the site more fully than the over arching themes explicit in them.

The exercise of site as thesis helped to distinguish the avenues of exposing a site and begin to question the players that inform a site condition. It is more that collecting details but informing them through a language of notation and representation that can capture the essence of the exploration more so than the static details of a place. Site is neither here nor there on the temporal scale, it is in the events occurring along the path and their interactions with each other exposing the new details of a place.

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Detroit, Michigan | Belle Isle

Belle Isle is a 982 acre park located across the MacArthur Bridge in the City of Detroit. It is nestled on the Detroit River between the international borders of the United States and Canada. It has housed throughout its years a conservatory, yacht club, boating club, coast guard post, golf course, zoo, botanical garden, as well as operated as staging grounds for WWII re-enactments and a small cart race track. While each of these programs or events existed at one time on the island many of them lost momentum, funding, attention or attraction throughout the years. Belle Isles connection to the rapidly shrinking city of Detroit and location along the polluted Detroit River leaves it as a less than desirable place for the previous reasons of assembly.

There are both individual instances of neglect as well as individual instances of growth within Detroit.

The perception of an individual city is so diverse it lacks identity or creates one anew. Is it then a place that can define its occupants or a non place in which occupants define it? Belle Isle has been acclimated by numerous user groups and lacks an identifiable program as a nature park within the city of Detroit. Its associations with numerous activities in the past can help to characterize the island almost as a completely different place when looked at through each of these events as a lens to transform the island.

At one point the island received attention from Frederick Law Olmstead and Eero Saarinen, two engaging practitioners within their respected fields.

As quickly as interest is created in a place, it can loose attention just as quickly. There does not exist a group of people focused and dedicated to the life and vitality of the island. Without anyone to claim its essence it can not reflect itself with a definitive character other than the neglect that is so prominent.

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Hashima island, Japan

This island is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture. It is known as “Battleship Island” because of its close resemblance to an old Japanese battleship. Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 and began the project, the aim of which was retrieving coal from undersea mines. As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960’s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima’s mines were a part of the the shut down. Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine in 1974. Travel to Hashima was re-opened on April 22, 2009 after more than 20 years of closure. While parts of the island are now open to visitors, much of it is still worn and unsafe from the years of neglect.

The sudden evacuation of island residents leaves the place with a subtle glimpse from the remnants left behind. It is the surge of people to and then away from the island that makes it a dynamic place of growth followed by despair. The demand from the public to open part of the island for exploration emphasizes the social notion of romantic ruins and their accepted place in the hinterlands of our cities, close enough to visit but at a distance to not always feel the tone of collapse.

The island is increasingly gaining international attention not only as one of the modern international heritages in the region, but also as the housing complex remnants. Moreover, the island has become the frequent subject of a discussion among enthusiasts for ruins. Since the abandoned island has not been maintained, several buildings have already collapsed. Other existing buildings are subject to breakage. In this regard, however, certain collapsed exterior walls have been restored with concrete.

The deterioration of the materials of the place only follow the deterioration of the industry when one brick falls the rest of the building will soon come after. Hashima Island is a complex social structure that was at one point the most densely populate city in the world and then just as quickly as its development it was evacuated and considered a ghost town. Because of its small and dense size it is a situation where industry and dwelling intertwines into a complex social structure existing isolated from the mainland. It’s present lack of inhabitation makes it a site defined by its past associations rather than its current constructs of romantic ruins.

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picher, oklahoma

Picher sprang up as a 20th-century boomtown—the “buckle” of the mining belt that ran through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. The earth underneath it produced most of the lead for US bullets in World Wars I and II and enough zinc to literally galvanize construction of the American suburbs. These raw materials were used to create stronger, water-resistant metal alloys, better batteries, and dietary supplements—the base materials of a modern society. Population peaked at 14,000 in 1926. When the lode ran dry in 1970, the mining companies moved out. Picher eventually became a Superfund site, and half a decade ago the state government offered residents an average of $55 per square foot to evacuate their homes. By September 2009, the police force had disbanded and the government dissolved. Picher was a dead city.

The irony of the collapse of the town is that these materials produced to make a stronger modern society were also the materials that broke down the local system forcing the society so invested making itself better collapse under its own demand in a singular focused town.

Except that a few people refused to leave. They call themselves chat rats, a loose and increasingly selfreliant colony armed with cell phones and Wi-Fi for communication and guns for driving off scrap-metal scavengers. It’s a life bordering on squalid—on the way out of the Gorillas Cage, Roberts spots shovel marks around the base of the burned-out signpost, the beginning of an attempt to steal it. Across the street, a former auction-house parking lot has become a dumping ground for tires. On the drive back out of town, he passes the abandoned high school and notices that the arts and crafts building has burned down. A man appears to be helping himself to bookshelves from an open classroom. Roberts can’t figure out why anyone would turn down the relocation money he’s offering. “Most people have bettered themselves through this process,” he says. “Now there are only radicals left.”

People on the outside question the reasoning of those occupants that remain yet are only sweeping the surface of the reasons that may be plausible to stay. It is through this naive absorption of a place can question the essence of certain occupants and their livelihood dedicated to a place. Each occupant has a story, a place or something else which keeps them dedicated to this place. Through questioning the next level of engagement it may be revealed the value of a site that has been abandoned by so many others.

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North Brother Island, New York

North Brother, became sites for hospitals that treated infectious diseases like typhus and tuberculosis and for mental hospitals, power plants, jails, homeless shelters and cemeteries for the indigent.

1985-1940: Riverside Hospital, quarantine hospital for small pox, typhoid and other diseases. Typhoid Mary was

known to be quarantined there WWII: Became housing for veterans and their families of world war II who were students in the New York area.

1950-1960: A treatment center for young drug addicts, corruption forced the facility to close quickly.

North Brother Islands close proximity to Manhattan yet its non existence is apparent on some on the most cultural devices of the city such as subway maps. While there has been much attention given to Govenor’s Island and its speculative new uses towards the city, both North and South Brother Island have been cast aside from the associations of urbanity. Instead the place is increasingly becoming a natural sanctuary for wildlife seeking refuge from the encroaching city. The occupants are then wild rather than domestic, animal rather than human.

The island is currently a wild life habitat for herons nesting grounds. While being completely surrounding by the haptic urban environment North Brother Island along with South Brother Island are operated through the park system to give relief to the wild life in the area.

As a place with numerous programs and associations it has now been diluted down to a place not occupied by a social structure but a survival structure. It is a place that through a series of attempts to occupy a space could not thrive for occupants and has been given over again to the nature that is currently consuming it.

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Astoria park swimming and Diving pool, queens nyc

Astoria is a neighborhood within the borough of Queens, NYC. Its recreational park while thriving in some of its contributions is lacking in its ability to deliver in others. While the summer swimming pool is always filled to overflowing with nearby residents, the adjacent diving pool is left empty and exposed throughout the season. “If there’s not enough money people have to help themselves. The public/private partnership always works.

Now we will have to educate the new wave of politicians about the importance of parks. I hope we get the one percent.” Around an affluent park and neighborhood pieces begin to fall through the cracks grasping them before the complete demise may give the opportunity to mediate in new ways to contain the anticipation of ruin.

One of the tales that is told through the neighborhood as to the lacking management of the diving pool is of an instance of a diver who defeated the friction of the water and meeting the bottom of the pool and the end of his life. Others of a less than creative tale with little variation is that the community pool was able to be constructed in conjunction with the diving pool for Olympic training. After training the diving pool was no longer needed but the swimming pool could be utilized by local residents.

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Program Quite the contrary, the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing... This is because to write can no longer designate an operation of recording, of observing, of representing, of “painting” but rather what the linguistician call a performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given to the first person and to the present), in which utterance has no other content than the act by which it is uttered: 2 Barthes “Death of the Author” Not all architecture is linear, nor is it all made of spatial additions, of detachable parts and clearly defined entities. Circular buildings, grid cities, as well as accumulations of fragmentary perspectives and cities without beginnings or ends, produce scrambled structures where meaning is derived from the order of experience rather than the order of composition. 161 Bernard Tschumi “Architecture and Disjunction”

Role:

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Rhetorical, Gatherer, Collecting, Deceiving, Composing. Through a series of operations that collect details of a site and situation them against each other in either opposition or compliment, the idea of a site, its existence, its story can begin to reveal itself. This process as thesis begins to question the way we currently assess a site and its context and the face value of the apparent facts. The program is the operation of constructing the narrative. Programming, sequencing, ordering and binding, these sites will influence each other not by location by the characteristics that have the ability to drift from place to place. Composing a collective narrative that intertwines the multiple sites into one act. The acts of fiction implemented on one site may carry throughout the collective narrative to assist in tying the sites together and exposing them all as places with details left to be exposed by conventional methods of investigation and analysis.

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Client:

Accomplice, Resident, Visitor, Spectator, Curator, Architect. Implementing a new process on a site is a two fold operation as a thesis. The thesis contributes to the discourse as a program by imposing a new way of making, seeing, writing. The act of thesis is part one of the program contributing to the client of the discourse, the architect. It calls into question the work of investigation into a gap in the architectural discourse followed by a concluding proposition that projects the work of the thesis. Can the act of investigation be a thesis unto itself? Is the act of making and the exposition of these explorations revealing as a technique of research that can contribute to new ways of research within the discipline?

Collecting facts and applying fictions to the site turn its occupants into accomplices that assist or reject the operation of the thesis. Utilizing the players and occupants of the site and the ways they operate within it exposes how human perception can alter the details of a place. Like a game of telephone, some phrase is inserted by a person at one end of the line, by the time the conversation carries through a line of people the statement is altered and reinterprets what once seemed straightforward. The human element and the negotiation of perception plays vital roles in the way we interact in society. How do we discover these flaws and fallacies and project them into a body of design work?

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Project:

The event of an interjected fallacy within architectural investigations produces a kink in the linear investigations of collection and reflection. It calls into question the essence of the place and gives the investigator authority to decipher the strengths of a place, may they be true or false. The rumors of a place yet to be proven, myths, legends and jolts of unexpected events can transform a place from something static to vibrant. At first pass on the understanding of a site, it is only grade level deep. Skimming the surface of the move obvious connotations that a site may have; derelict, industrial, community, temperate, rapid, hybrid, homogenous. Viktor Shklovsky explains “If we start to examine the general laws of perception, we see that as perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic. Thus, for example, all of our habits retreat into the area of the unconsciously automatic”1, by finding the traces left from the multiple layers of a site, it is then the composition of these fractured pieces that can reassemble a site into a new place for design reflections.

Collection of information will be pertaining to the occupants and their stories of the sites as well as the traces left behind of events, places and artifacts that cannot speak for themselves. The collecting of a new history will interrogate the individual and their perspective as a way of creating an series of biased authors with an unbiased aggregated outcome. The individual stories may become out of proportion to the effects which occur to the site. One occupants memory of a situation might have no repercussions according to current record but may drastically alter the effects of a place by creating a new narrative of the place. Artifacts work in the same question of scale; the scale of both physical and connective implications.

The project works as a detective story revealing itself as a network of pieces. One clue leads to the next and when assembled into a resolution it is worth more than any one pieces value by itself. A detective knows then from the first clue or event that a mystery is revealed with the prospect of a solution. The program is a operation set, programming the moves taken to uncover the mystery and solve one instance of the narrative.

1

Viktor Shklovsky “Art as Technique” in Theory of Prose (1925).

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Donn Angel Perez | Stitch Hybrid

Technique

“The nature of the relationship between the subject and this method of investigation demands flexibility. Ithe absurd and unexpected imaginations of writers of fiction, we find a compelling inspiration to celebrate that freedom.

Highly unlikely starting points for architecture … allow for poetic license, and the supplementary literary tools of extreme irony, sarcasm and humor forced us to test our own design ideas. Just as there exists a diverse array of writerly genres – from journalistic essays to poetry and short stories – there are multiple modes of output for architectural work. In this sense this conceptual experimentation of form, presentation, and spatial organization suggests not so much a manifesto as a more continuous form of research, striving always for new forms of expression”. Naja & DeOstos

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The work is divided into three parts, collective narrative, individual site and artifact.

The collective narrative, embodies the written work and literary techniques of merging the sites into one situation The individual site works between the narrative and the artifact, through literary tactics and the act of making, remaking and manipulating each site begins to expose its strengths within the collective. The representation development is the work that will then help explain the acts and processes of the thesis as a coherent whole.

The act of making the artifacts within the time of thesis studio development rather than at the end as a final piece of precise detail defines them then as an act of making and developing the process of the thesis through these works rather than them standing in as a three dimensional representation for the thesis itself. The outcome of the thesis is then the works produced through the explanation of the thesis. Only a small allotment of time has been given to the final production of the thesis deliverables because many will be created within the design of the thesis.

The collective narrative is developed through three techniques; the doppelganger, situation jolt, and the palimpsest. These techniques will be a way to focus the anticipation of fictional narratives and overlapping characteristics. When the work moves into the focus of each site and its artifact these three techniques can be further explored as situations to represent through making.

Kristy Williams | Hagia Sophia Suitcase

Linlin Wang | Alter Ego

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Claire Taggart | City Model Box

Situation jolt:

A jolt can be a small delicate action which can cause a great effect. It’s action is abrupt and unexpected which may also cause unexpected effects. What happens when something is embedded in a new culture from another, and begins to change the surrounding environment? What happens when strategic fictions begin to blend with the histories of a place? It is a dynamic place that can either accept the fictions as a new voice of reality posing as a host to the parasite of fallacy or repel is with an unexpected rupture of fiction that capsizes all stabilized situations within a site.

A lie, gossip, misunderstanding, interrupted idea or extraction of a relic can be a small move that propels the narrative forward into larger surprising effects. By jolting a sites history by inserting new fictions it may remove its narrowed typological categorization of a specific type of place and expand itself to a site redux of new possibilities.

Palimpsest:

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Resulting from scraping clean and reusing the parchment on which it is written, a palimpsest is a manuscript concealing several layers of overlapping text. Many historical works, which were considered lost, have been unexpectedly revealed embedded in other texts, most famously the Archimedes Palimpsest, which was discovered in Istanbul in 1907. The term palimpsest is also used in forensic science with reference to material clues revealing the sequence of events at a crime scene, and in psychology to describe the erasing of memories in the subconscious.

Shift the layers on top of each other overlapping old and new, as well as defining intermediate states in between old and new, drawing over them again, expressing movement, time, change, allowing elements to migrate from one layer to the next, appear, disappear, transform, stretch, glow and dissolve. Additional to drawing in layers, use collage, attaching cultural fragments, or structures as you have done in previous exercises. It can begin to consider shifts in three directions: narrative (the way or ways in which to tell a story), site (the details, artifacts and qualities tied to one place), temporal (changes over time, more like a time lapse rather than a documentary).

Doppelganger:

Often used to describe identical characters within literature and film and is also used as a tool to analyze the relationship between a character and its author. The doppelganger in perception can also be the alter ego in creation. By highlighting certain characteristics that amplify the connection to another, the individual is lost and a merging of characters begins to happen. Alter ego then is creating the imagined other person whether present or non-present it is the belief that there may be a copy or altered copy existing as well. The architecture of a doppelganger explores multiple identities and layered memories of place. It can begin to investigate the heterotopia, as a space that is also a non place. In exploring the multifaceted literary, artistic and cultural dimensions of alter ego, the thesis aims to delineate a non linear architecture of duality and the perceptions of place. Investigating sites as mirrored places duplicated and copied characteristics across multiple sites and the associations between them it works as a means of posing questions of scale and authenticity. The concept of doppelganger also embodies ideas about the relationship between an original and its copy and of parallel spaces thus creating two figures within a figure, two references within a reference, or two cities within a city.

To use a cultural fragment, history, association or location at each site and trying to replicate its existence on another site calls into question the original existence of the thing. It may in fact operate to a higher level in the alien site rather than its original habitat. What then does make a site unique or are details de-saturated across numerous places?

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Time line

The time line of the thesis studio semester breaks down week by week a sequence of tasks and projects to be accomplished to create the final essence of the thesis. Currently each week tackles a goal of a critical piece to the thesis. They are loosely divided among collective work and individual site work. Within each week span one individual site narrative and artifact will be developed from the initial collective narrative and may find themselves overlapping or engaging each other simultaneously rather than sequentially. Within the progress of the thesis is a set of expectations and deliverables for each phase of the work to help focus the discussion and the work towards its intended outcome.

Internal Review One: Have the details of each site and present a collective narrative that works all the sites into one narrative act. A collage/storyboard as a visual representation of the sequences of moving between sites and the acts that occur in each place. Looking for ways to strengthen the ties between the sites and expose the individual and collective narrative simultaneously. Also, to be an experiment in the fictionalization in architecture, gauge the understanding of truth and fiction within the constructed narrative.

Internal Review Two: Two sites should be fully developed in with respect to their individual roles within the collective narrative as well as how the artefacts further explore their characteristics and the theses revelations of its engagement within the overall work.

Midterm Reviews: With all five sites developed this will be a time to situate them against each other as well as against the collective narrative. With the opportunity to share this architectural fiction with outside jurors it will give a sense in what is believable yet untrue versus what may be too far stretched in calling attention to its own fallacy rather than strengthening the thesis.

Internal Review Three: After reworking the collective narrative and reflecting on the discussion of the midterm review this will be a time to re-present the work as a more seamless piece.

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Final Presentation: The final presentation will be a place to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the process through making, the questions of authenticity and the operations of new approaches to understanding site. Does fictional architecture work to understand the details of places, how can revelations be made through making research rather than proposing ideas and why is site deserve the investments of new strategies of reflection?

Week

January

1

1.3

Launch | Present

2

1.10

Site data collection and analysis

3

1.17

4

1.24

Collective site narrative composition (internal review)

5

1.31

Individual Siite 1: Belle Isle; Detroit, MI

February 6

2.7

Individual Site 2: Hashima, Japan

7

2.14

Individual Site 3: Picher, OK (internal reveiw)

8

2.21

Site Visit Preparation : Revisit Case as Toolset

9

Spring Break 2.28

Site Visits (NYC)

march 10

3.7

Individual Site 4: North Brother Island, NYC

11

3.14

Individual Site 5: Astoria Park Diving Pool; Queens, NYC (Midterm Reviews)

12

3.21

Collective Site Narrative

13

3.28

Refine Site Artifacts

April

14

4.4

Final Presentation Preparation (internal review) | 39

15

4.11

16

4.18

Final presentation detail wrap up

17

4.28

Presentation

Paradigm Map | Design A diagram derives from the context of a site, program, or history. A diagram does not necessarily exist a priori in any project. In this sense, it is not like a type which has a fixed relationship to form, function, and history. There are two kinds of work on diagrams. one is theoretical and analytic, the other is operational and synthetic. The former takes existing buildings and analyzes them to find diagrams that animate these buildings. The latter is something teased out of a program or site that permits these conditions to be seen in a different way. The diagram is both a form of text, a tissue of traces, and an index of time. A diagram is to architecture as a text is to a narrative. The diagram is formed but it may not be formal. 204 Eisenman “Feints: The Diagram”

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Through the discussions of our first group Paradigm Map, the shift away from a static map towards a mode of operations began. Working with an Encyclopedia as an artifact of truth and fact, we begin to questions its validity through moves of additions and subtractions to the datum. Each of these moves question specific topics towards each of our thesis and begin to reference people, projects and texts with (in)/out of the discipline that strengthen each thesis polemic.

A short story by Jorge Luis Borges called “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” speaks of a bootlegged encyclopedia with an additional set of pages not referenced in the index. It contains the information for a country call Uqbar. The article in the encyclopedia references three books about the place, one which is discovered. Either this is an exceptional hoax with all the basis covered to back up the argument or a unique discovery that is usually missed. It begins to question the content, validity and truth of the author and book.

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42 | •

Classification •

Encyclopedia •

world history War on Terror

Gulf War

Modernity

Vietnam War

Record

Korean War

After infidelity of the wife of a high commanding officer with a man not serving, the officer proposed a draft for the service as a way to send the man into combat as revnge.

He did die in battle, but his wife gave birth 8 months after deployment.

le Ro

The lawsuit concluded about the creative rights of the unpublished novel “deepthroat” that made its fame and fortunte not as a text but a racy pornographic film.

variation. fiction. sight. dicotomy. fact. blind. assumption. representation. audience. diversion. visual. medium. resolution. expanded view.realm. solicite. storyline. contradiction.

World War Two

World War One

Spanish-American War

Record

Civil War

critique. expand. focus. objective. voice. character. plot.

Mexican War

vague. question. blur. undefine. threshold. fluctuate. phase.

War of 1812

After being repressed for so long, the non-segregated communities still had trouble blending, this resulted in harsh financial breaks that Although it was a lead to unethical earnings. routine test flight, the nephew of the pilot snuck on board and accidentally bumped the lift gate that released the atomic bomb.

Press •

Explain Information •

The purpose of exposition (or expository writing) is to explain and analyze information by presenting an idea, relevant evidence, and appropriate discussion.

Modernity

Exposition. Framing Facts

Debate •

Critical Review •

Persuasive Reasoning •

Edgar Allens Poe’s Death from an excursion through the city alleys where he encountered raging raven.

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D tud of th an re Pa Ba iller & er P Louis Reth io.

• e p M in P ra ud ers Fo e ic R k ren racti Re •Ro hel De rillard. icardo on: N Pelleti ing Re digm ce sic e o p c S Arc of A •Dialand Ba erteau imula Scofid tes on r. Arch resenta rch hit ec c io it . ture itectu •Ro ne Ag rthes. Spatia ra & Sim. Touri the Be ecture tion. re, T re h s R l Arc •O land B st. Arc he Res Storie ulatio ms: Su aviour epres hit ec n art lga s po hit tica of N enta e ture h e n se e ti ag •Marc Viso. G es. Rh ture fr sibility as Stu w Sp on a Fic n die ec •Je el Du uillerm etoric om W of Fo tio ies d the h im s. n an g c it rm o h P h o ers •An Fran amp Kuit f the out: s. C ou pe r Im . ri B c c th h ti T c a t tive •Ka ony V ois Ly he B : Con age ody, L cal E e H s ri o o n in th s d iv id gic a ge •Le erine ler. D tard. D e Strip ection at , a ys o r r n n ia v u dS a Mu •Alb Mano Hayles grams cham ped B and Co ex. sic en a p . ,A v rt a •N erto P ich. T Unfinis of Diag s Trans re By Hntradic f th nd e e h ti h Re •N il Leac rez-Go e Lang ed Wo rams /Forme er Bac on le o pre e h he m sen rs Ro lors •G il Leac . Cam ez Th uage o rk: From tati ,E on o u h f e ven •G y Debo . Vitruv flage B Reve New M Cybo -T iorg la rg ec ius rd. he to om toin edia io • L T C arg eG dia •MG ark C.Agambhee Socierucifixusing of Orde Cognisp e las r: P he :A Tay ty n. uill m s re o rc e D e lo f rs h rm if h •A r. T fere the it pe o h ctiv g ug S ec ea •Ala nes VaKuitca. e pictu nce an pecta ture, M hro nd d c re im rd Arc ese et •N in Rob a. La L’Ency in Qu Repe le. hit s, ic c ti b ec e P an ativ tura d th •So k Bantoe-Grille oint C lopedie stions tion: O arr lR n : eD o ph t. n M c ep ark Guy ea •So ie C k. Gri The urte res e th D h T E a en ff a t p e Ins ns tati f tin •Ald hie Calle. The in and rasers ey bord o on ct ’s & F Th le •Jo ous H lle. Ta Shad Sabin e e ilms. ke ow e Ro rge ux n ds •Ita Luis ley. P Care of R lo ep t •C Calv Borgereface of You x res e .S in : rs en tati •La . Lew o. Inv s. LabyCollec elf ht on ug •M ne Ka is The isible C rinths ted W ork a u hro s.

•J.Grk DanfmannScrew ities et ta •W . Ballaielews. Essay pe Le ativ r k .G r tt •Pa . Se rd. Th i. Ho ing an ers na u •W tricia Hbald. T e Overl se of LUnme the .G of •D.J . Sebighsmhite Em oaded eaves thodolo

L

•Ra

e • fael L Sit • Sete, Fongoria

deffining. tracing. categories.overlay. mapping. diagram. ties. phenomenon. patterns. linking. unpack. expand. explore. disect.

1787 Constitutional Convention1789 Bill of Rights adopted 1792 First U.S. Trade Union1793 Fugitive Slave Act1798 Alien and Sedition Act • 1800 Jefferson's election begins Virginia Dynasty 1808 Congress prohibits importing of African slaves 1820 Fed offers land at $1.25 an acre 1821 Missouri Compromise 1823 Monroe Doctrine 1829 Jackson introduces spoils system 1846 -1847 Mormon trek from Navoo to Salt Lake City • 1848 Gold discovered in California 1854 Republican Party formed for abolition of slavery 1857 Dred Scott decision 1863 Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves 1865 Lincoln assassinated 1865 - 1877 Reconstruction in old South 1876 National League founded (baseball) 1879 Women lawyers permitted to argue cases before Supreme Court 1883 Civil Service established 1886 Haymarket Square labor riot in Chicago kills eleven people 1890 AFL founded by S Gompers 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act 1892 Strike at Carnegie Steel results in ten deaths 1896 Supreme Court rules "separate but equal" legal 1901 Pres. McKinley shot by anarchist 1904 Roosevelt asserts U.S. right to intervene in Latin America 1909 NAACP in NYC1910 Fundamentalism begins with "Five Points" 1917 Selective Service Act creates draft • 1917 Blacks migrate north and west1920 18th Amendment prohibits alcohol 1920 19th Amendment gives women right to vote 1927 Lindbergh crosses Atlantic non-stop • 1929 Stock Market crashes 1933 Roosevelt begins "New Deal" 1935 Social Security Act provides retirement insurance December 7, 1941 Japan surprise attack on Pearl Harbor • 1945 U.S. A-bombs Japan • 1947 Marshall Plan 1948 - 1954 Communism quashed in US 1955 Blacks boycott buses in Montgomery 1955 Supreme Court orders school desegregation 1955 AFL and CIO merge • 1961 Peace Corps 1960-65 Civil Rights movement 1963 Kennedy assassinated 1965-70 Demonstrations against Vietnam War 1966-69 Hippie movement 1973 War Powers Act1973-74 Nixon resigns over Watergate • 1983 Reagan proposes Star Wars and increases military funding 1980s "War on Drugs" jails 1/5 of young black men • 1991 Gulf War is first U.S. reduction of a regional power 1996 Welfare reform 1997 Robust economy creates longest prosperity in U.S. history 1999 Budget goes into surplus 2001 9/11 terror attack alerts America 2000s US nuclear superiority and conventional inadequacy •

rhetorical modes Prove Validity •

The purpose of argumentation (also called persuasive writing) is to prove the validity of an idea, or point of view, by presenting sound reasoning, discussion, and argument that thoroughly convince the reader. Persuasive writing is a type of argumentation with the additional aim to urge the reader to take some form of action

PostModernity

Argument. Ideas of Facts

Poetry •

Journal •

Visual for the Reader •

Recreate •

The purpose of description is to re-create, invent, or visually present a person, place, event, or action so that the reader can picture that which is being described. Descriptive writing can be found in the other rhetorical modes

SuperModernity

Description. Illustrate Ideas

Story of Events •

Sequence •

Stories

Novels •

Narrative. Creating Ideas

The purpose of narration is to tell a story or narrate an event or series of events. This writing mode frequently uses the tools of descriptive writing. Narration is an especially useful tool for sequencing or putting details and information into some kind of logical order, usually chronological. Working with narration helps us see clear sequences separate from all other mental functions.

g atin oc

location. coordinates. project. place. artifact. mapping. history.

March, 2007 I failed my last science test, I don’t think I’ll pass the seventh grade again this year.

material. novel. exposure. story. masses. antagonist. construction.lineage. creation. sequence. event. recreate. obscure.

PostModernity SuperModernity

Monumental shifts in traditional frameworks of thought and theory lead to the creation of new paradigms.

Operating across history, architectural periods, and text our work questions reality and fiction. The scale moves from the most concrete reality of the existence of a site to the shift in the author’s role in (re)defining the site, to the representation of a fictional narrative through image or text. Lines connect from the reality-fiction scale to methods of narrative and historical moments. When these lines intersect a fictional text is generated which operates in the narrative method and time period being traced. The map then sets up two types of operations, one revealing the placement of interests within the contexts of each other and multi disciplinary practice. The orbs reveal new possibilities through unexpected overlaps and new ways of thinking through a combination of practices.

Within the map, we have cited each of our own resources and how they tie to the over arching theme of the map. Each color notates each thesis within the over all map, red - Lisa Sauvé and yellow - Jessica Mattson.

This map was created by linking together arguments from two of the thesis. The tracing of history (Jessica) and the style of the narrative (Lisa). At these intersecting links a new mode of narrative is generated as an example how the thesis might play out. A work in progress...

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                                    

          

44 |

            

                 

            



                                    

   

    

     

          

            

                 

                                                                                 

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Precedents | Cross-Disciplinary Ideas improve. The meaning of words has a part in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary.

Progress demands it. Staying close to an author’s phrasing, plagiarism exploits his expressions, erases false ideas, replaces them with correct ideas. 207 Guy Debord “The Society of the Spectacle” The works of the cross-disciplinary precedents engage in the representation, process and exploration. They interact in new ways of storytelling, exposing through layers of media as well as abstract literary techniques. Each of these works maybe a way to engage technique and program into the project of developing the thesis and its explorations into fictionalized architectural events.

Marcel Duchamp | The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The large Glass), 1923

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Duchamp created The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, in a time period from 1915 to 1923.

The work is done on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It overlays situations of chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship.

In 1939 Duchamp began working on ideas for The Large Glass. He worked on preliminary pieces as he made numerous notes and studies. The notes reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and myth which describes the work. The Green Box is a publication of his notes published in 1934.

The sequence of investigation, combination of materials, articulated craft and rigor of technique this piece sets many precedence in the way my thesis may explore and expand on the execution of a site analysis and the creation of its artifacts. As an entire process work throughout years of investigation, The Green Box is also a way of reflecting on the narrative, development and process of the work. This has a strong essence to the way the thesis calls into question the actual act of creating and engaging the discourse of architecture.

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D+S | Tourisms: suitCase Studies, 1991

Fifty identical Samsonite suitcases transport the contents of the exhibition and double as display cases for the exhibition of their contents. Each suitcase is a case-study of a particular tourist attraction in each of the fifty states in the US. Each case study critically analyzes the attraction into official and unofficial representations, both images and texts and synthesizes them into new configurations. The project takes on national tourism, specifically travel to the past as a means to re-live national narratives. Only two types of sites are considered: famous beds and battlefields, two sites in which the subtlety of tourism’s construction of aura most strongly feeds the tourist’s hunger for the real, no matter the artifice required to produce it. The installation takes on the play between authenticity and authentication. Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro) “The Ciliary Function”

The questioning of authenticity of the project and the creation of subsequent narratives within the work situates the categorized places with unique twists that collapse the collective ideas. It is the work of creating authentic narratives through the construction of a synthesized exhibition. What once was false is now authentic based on its context and situation within it.

D+S | Travelogues, 2001

The sterile corridor is a space peculiar to the regulatory nature of contemporary air travel. It is a featureless non-place between jurisdiction, between the place left behind and the one about to be entered. it is a space in which diverse travelers share the status of world citizens in limbo. Defined by one-directional movement toward Customs and Passport Control, the sterile corridor is a space to pass through and not stop. Thirty three backlit lenticular screens are evenly spaced along the one thousand eight hundred linear feet of corridors of the International Arrivals Building. Each screen holds one second of action animated by the speed of the moving viewer.

The succession of lenticular screens builds a sequence of micro-movies. The spaces between screens form time lapses. Thus, the traveler waling down the sterile corridor will inadvertently engage in real-time moving picture narrative in tiny installments. Each set of panels tells a fictional narrative triggered by an anonymous traveler and their suitcase. The cases are x-rayed; contents materialize and trigger “flashback” images of a travel experience. Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro) “The Ciliary Function”

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The technique of telling a narrative, a time lapse rather than documentary is an intriguing concept to what is then left out. Only certain contents of the suitcase are extracted as exposed through sequence on the screens while the others may enforce the idea of the narrative or embody subtle tones to assist in allowing the viewer to make their own assumption or afterward to the scene.

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Nick bantock | griffin and sabine, 1991

Griffin Moss is an artist living in London who makes postcards for a living. He is unhappy and lonely, though he is unaware of these feelings. His life is changed forever when he receives a cryptic postcard from Sabine Strohem, a woman he has never met. Like Griffin, she is an artist (she illustrates postage stamps) and comes from a fictional group of small islands in the South Pacific known as the Sicmon Islands (Arbah, Katie, Katin, Ta Fin, Quepol and Typ). The two begin to correspond regularly. Griffin comes to realize that he is in love with Sabine, who reciprocates his feelings, and that they are soulmates. However, his growing uncertainty as to Sabine’s true nature and the changes her presence in his life has brought to him develops into fear and he ends up rejecting her offer for him to come see her in person. He comes to the conclusion that Sabine is a figment of his imagination, created from his own loneliness. It appears to be true until another postcard arrives from Sabine with an ominous promise that if he will not come to her, she will go to him. Griffin and Sabine Volume 1

The creation of postcards and stamps specifically for the message at hand has an operation all on its own on conveying a message and tone rather than simple representation. The physical creation of letters and stamps for a correspondence of no physicality whatsoever begins to call to question the truth and imagination of the situation. While possibly not important whether Sabine is real or not, the game of questioning both is an interesting tactic in composing a narrative.

Tony Cragg | Stacking, 1975

“I am concerned in weaving a network of associations, relationships, techniques and images. Rather than a linear progression, I want a three dimensional quality to my work over a period of time.” (Cragg, Interview, View, San Francisco, 1988.) While many of his pieces rely on a logic of accumulation or aggregations of found objects, others are made as autonomous forms carved or case from a single (and often found) material. Cragg’s process is exploratory, and the work based on the qualities of the material at hand: plaster, ceramic, metal, glass, carbon fiber, stone.

Tony Cragg, Interview “View” 1988.

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The process of collection and creation in response to particular pieces accumulating into a new work is provocative. While it’s final result is geometrically simplistic the logic and construction of the work involves multiple levels of rigor. The relationships among adjacent pieces, the tight and loose packing of objects, the slips and reveals of spaces all emphasize smaller details within the larger work.

Griffin and Sabine Volume 1, 1991

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Precedents | Texts Smithson, Robert. Robert Smithson: Collected Writings “The Monuments of Passaic” Edited by Jack Flam.

(Berkeley: University of California Press,1996), 68-74.

Smithson, Passaic. \ “Actually, the landscape was no landscape, but ‘a particular kind of heliotypy’, a kind of selfdestroying postcard world of failed immortality and oppressive grandeur”.

From the purely abandoned industrial Battleship Island to the adopted terrains unofficially claimed by homeless, the sites of intervention vary tremendously. It can be about creating a process of collecting the embodied energy of the site and utilizing its characteristics to transform it into a place of possibilities unable to be realized on the other side of the vague boundary.

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Calvino, Italo. Invisible cities. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974).

Calvino, Invisible Cities. \ “Isaura, city of the thousand wells, is said to rise over a deep, subterranean lake. On all, sides wherever the inhabitants dig long vertical holes in the ground, they succeed in drawing up water, as far as the city extends, and no further. Its green border repeats the outline of the buried lake; everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock’s calcareous sky…”

Calvino’s Invisible Cities is the work of description and blurring the context into a expanding and contracting field of where the city lies. Calvino’s use of descriptive narrative to embed the audience within the place making the world in which he created believable is a powerful tactic that can help to fade the distinguishing factors between truth and fiction within a narrative.

Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. “Death of the Author” Translated by Stephen Heath. (London: Fontana, 1977).

Barthes, Death of the Author. \ “Probably this has always been the case: once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality — that is, finally external to any function but

the very exercise of the symbol — this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins.”

The author is no longer the legible voice in the work, instead it is through a development of the work that a new voice emerges and the author is only the catalyst for conveying this new work. The thesis is not about my voice as an author but the outcome of the new process of a site analysis composed of narrative and creation. It is then the objective to loose my voice in the end of the thesis and allow the argument to have its own defining tone.

Perec, Georges. Species of Spaces And Other Pieces. Translated by John Sturrock. (London: Penguin, 2008).

Perec, Species of Spaces. \ “In short, spaces have multiplied, been broken up and have diversified. There are spaces today of every kind and every size, for every use and every function. To live is to pass from one space to another, while doing your very best not to bump yourself.”

Perec’s uses words as an operation on a page, a manipulation that can be handled much like a tangible object. Writing can then be used as a device for a design rather than as a tool for explanation. Freewriting, prose, poetry, arrangement can all be ways of exploring the idea of narrative and writing techniques that will help to amplify the narrative and thesis argument I am constructing.

Foucault, Michel. Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays And Interviews. “What is Author” (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977).

Foucault, What is Author. \ “To begin with, the thesis concerning a work. It has been understood that the task of criticism is not to reestablish the ties between an author and his work or to reconstitute an author’s thought and experience through his works and, further, that criticism should concern itself with the structures of a work, its architectonic forms, which are studied for their intrinsic and internal relationships.”

While Bartes presents the Death of the Author, Foucault asks what is author in the first place. This work is more of a guidance of things to avoid when working as the author of a work. Foucault begins the work criticizing his own work that fell short because of his lack of understanding of author. While the thesis operates as part of my interests and defines a window of my practice it also must exist without author and allow itself to move in the way it need to without the handling of pre-implications.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Jorge Luis Borges: Labrynths. Translated by Dominique de Roux. (Paris: L’Herne, 1964).

Borges, Labrynths. \ “I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.The mirror troubled the far end of a hallway in a large country house on Calle Gaona, in Ramos Mejia*; the encyclopedia is misleadingly titled The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), and is a literal (though also laggardly) reprint of the 1902Encyclopoedia Britannica.”

A short story by Jorge Luis Borges called “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” speaks of a bootlegged encyclopedia with an additional set of pages not referenced in the index. It contains the information for a country call Uqbar. The article in the encyclopedia references three books about the place, one which is discovered. Either this is an exceptional hoax with all the basis covered to back up the argument or a unique discovery that is usually missed. It begins to question the content, validity and truth of the author and book.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. (London: Rebel Press, 2004).

Debord, Society of the Spectacle. \ “For one to whom the real world becomes real images, mere images are transformed into real beings tangible figments which are the efficient motor of trancelike behavior. Since the spectacle’s job is to cause a world that is no longer directly perceptible to be seen via different specialized mediations, it is inevitable that it should elevate the human sense of sight to the special place once occupied by touch; the most abstract of the senses, and the most easily deceived, sight is naturally the most readily adaptable to present day society’s generalized abstraction.”

“Critical theory has to be communicated in its own language the language of contradiction, dialectical in form as well as in content: the language of the critique of the totality, of the critique of history. Not some “writing degree zero” just the opposite. Not a negation of style, but the style of negation.”

Debord presents a series of arguments about the spectacle. One way he enhances his argument is by reversing the comparison. Such as in the last sentence of the quote, “ not a negation of style, but the style of negation”, it helps to showcase how sequence, literary device and the situation of two things against each other may not always be a reciprocal reaction. When situating sites against each other in text and artifact, the idea of two ways of gauging their relation to each other is compelling.

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Relevant Texts

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Agamben, Giorgio. (1995). “Difference and Repetition: On Guy Debord’s Films”. at Sixth International Video Week.

Centre Saint-Gervais. Geneva.

Allen, Stan. (2006). “Trace Elements” in Tracing Eisenman. 49-65.

Barthes, Roland. (1977). “Rhetoric of the Image,” in The Responsibility of Forms. Berkeley: UC Press. 21-40 Benjamin, Walter. (1986). “The Author as Producer”, in Reflections Edited by Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken

Books. 220-38.

Darden, Douglas. (0000). Condemned Building D. W. Meinig, (1976) “The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene,” The Interpretation of Ordinary

Landscapes (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press): 33-50.

Eastering, Keller. (2005). “Believers and Cheaters”. in Log. 33-36 Eyal Weizman, Paulo Tavares, Susan Schuppli and Situ Studio. (2010) “Forensic Architecture.” Architectural

Design(280) (10-05): 58-63.

Fisher, Thomas R. (2000). “Architecture of Fiction.” in In the Scheme of Things: Alternative Thinking on the

Practice of Architecture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ghirardo, Diane. (1984). “The Architecture of Deceit,” in Perspecta 21. 110-115.

Huxley, Aldous. (1959). Preface: Collected Works. Harper and Row Publishers.

Ignasi de Solà-Morales Rubió, (1995). “Terrain Vague” in ANYPLACE ed. by Cynthia Davidson. Cambridge and

London: MIT Press. 118-123

Kaufmann, R. Lane. (1990). The Skewed Path: Essaying an Unmethodical Method. in Essays on the Essay. edited

by Butrym, Alexander. University of Georgia Press.

Leach, Neil. (2006). “Becoming” in Camouflage. Boston: MIT Press.

Schafer, Ashley. (2006). “Theory After ‘After Theory’” in Perspecta 38. 109-125.

Smithson, Robert and Sky, Alison. (1973-1979). “An Interview: Entropy Made Visible” in The Writings of Robert

Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt, New York, New York University Press.

Smithson, Robert. (1996). “A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites” Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, edited by

Jack Flam. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. 2nd Edition.

Tschumi, Bernard . (1994). “Program,” in Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Tschumi, Bernard. “Spaces and Events.” Architecture and Disjunction. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), 141-

152.

Cross Disciplinary Works Kuitca, Guillermo. (1992). L´Encylopédie (Detalle). mixed paper. 30 x 21 cm.

Haynes, Todd. (2007). I’m Not There. Film.

Cragg, Tony. (1975). Stacking. Mixed Media.

Duchamp, Marcel. (1923). The Large Glass. Mixed Media.

Duchamp, Marcel. (1934). The Green Box. Paper and Mixed Media.

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travelCASE

Out of kindness, or, being a collector, out of vanity, he led me to a sort of museum case...

He told me he had a little place near Pergamino,and that he had gathered his collection over years of traveling back and forth through the province. Borges “The Story of Rosendo Juarez”

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The work of case as thesis came about in two phases. The first called to question the idea of the case by comparing Georges Perec’s “Species of Spaces” with the variables in which case may be used. The first exercise looked at where a case may take place such as a casement or suitcase or its events and connotations surrounding the word case such as case in point or get off my case. This exposed the realm of situations that may arise by one datum surrounded by variables. The choice variable from this exercise became the travelcase, which stimulated phase two of the work.

The travel case is a tool to collect, organize and decipher elements taken away from different sites and composed into one container. As a case carried around during site studies and collection, the work of the project composes itself in real time through a series of collection actions rather than distinguishing them site by site. It is then a toolbox for the thesis to operate through its program of defining site and narrative. It is an atlas of collections of places and spaces defined by the provocations put forth from the author.

As a part of the operation of thesis, the role of collecting and organizing is as pertinent to the outcome as is the narrative and artifacts created in reflection and through the process of the thesis. The case then is one of the first moves of thesis itself, appearing during the development phase. The case informs, instruct and assists the thesis but in the same move by creating and utilizing the case, it becomes a thesis of the thesis. Part of the final thesis actual stems from questioning how and why do we operate by staging a hypothesis and what is the utilization of the process which can inform as much as the end result of the research.

Perec : Species of Spaces and other Pieces

tracingGRADE : Case as Thesis and other Places case suit case brief case case nut case book case case case case en case dis case in case lower case upper case case pillow case type case watch case case case case gear case case just in case case case case note case another case case case travel case open and shut case building a case in any case case get off my case in some case rest my case case

base ment load mate ment

tte

rn fying s

d ing place pace in point

of mistake s

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POST SCRIPT House + Demo-set The summer gambit and its subsequent demo set. A place to explore the first move of interest. It exposes rather quickly modes of representation, techniques and avenues of interest where a thesis may lie without a commitment from the onset.

Blog Posts An excerpt from the blog being kept throughout the thesis exploration showcasing some of the thoughts, research and insight throughout semester one. Some are more within the expanded field of research while others are whimsical thoughts and probes into ways narrative and fiction may implement itself within the practice of architecture.

Sketchbook Photos from the sketchbook I have been keeping collecting all of the work, thoughts and research. The sketchbook is a mode of working and collecting the process in one place. The adjacencies and sequence of entries show a development and relationship of an evolving thesis throughout the semester.

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Review Transcripts A set of notes taken by myself or a peer, or transcriptions from each review which focused on a specific project or topic to the thesis development. Many of the transcripts are shorthand for the full conversation, possibly negating certain comments as to strengthen the existing project or inserting new commentary to further question the project.

ideaS, GeStureS, and teSt caSeS

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HOUSE AS THESIS

Dealing with four seasons of extremes temperature and exposed in three hundred sixty degrees to the surrounding winds and atmosphere, the water towers of abandoned Detroit give a fruitful breeding ground of experimental labs for interventions of variable climactic conditions. In the house as thesis gambit the water tower is a shelter of refuge as well as itself seeking refuge from the terrain vague it has been identified with. By controlling the outcome of weather and climate rather than the weather and climate themselves we can trace patterns and intervene in critical approaches towards re-mediating abandoned spaces. Simple acts of raw resources collect themselves into a system networking together for the use of occupancy and production. At the first level of intervention the tower is fit to prepare for all seasons.

Above the ground and atop a terrain vague territory of itself, the abandoned water towers in Detroit allow for an escape and catalog of the city from high above. The roof and its water tower remnant both give opportunities for intervention and living capacity. Exploding the water tower into a series of panels that can shift and respond to the current season and conditions gives flexibility and adaptability to a once derelict artifact.

This series of layers can shift to allow the walls to breathe or insulate. A layer of striated surface covers the roof, agitated by seeds and debris carried onto the roof by the wild occupants of the city flying overhead and the breezes from the river carrying them there, begins to emerge throughout the seasons. With the simple placement of a striated surface, water can be collected, roots can be planted, and life and vitality can emerge. Moving up the tower, the manipulation of the tower and its materials transitions the users space from outside to in. It is the blurring of thresholds and the capturing of atmosphere that helps define architecture of a place set in as part of the systems of a site rather that a barrier to them.

dEMO SET

Simple systems applied to derelict sites allow new intervention to come out of raw matter. With the understanding and study of systems that once put these abandoned sites into the situation they are now in, we can utilize an intelligent rebellion against the previous actions of these weathering patters by harnessing them into raw systems of intervention that allow these spaces to repair themselves over time and through a sequence of procedures. By working from the ground up to tap into all local and relevant resources the capacity of a project can be amplified by the context that had at one point turned its back on the project. These material and system technologies should be explored through a catalog of situations and scenarios that all fall under the criteria of a terrain vague location that can reemerge next to its neighboring sites as a place even more vital than when it was first conceived because of the deep rooted reliance and resilience to the surrounding landscape.

As part of the House as Thesis project the model may have only enhanced the artifact more than exhibiting the idea. While it did give scale and examine the operation of the project, it also did not dig deeper into the details of how far the project reaches into the context and systemic links of the project.

Taken from an excerpt from “Living Systems� which was referenced during the review, this project looks at frameworks and expectations. As a set of scaffolding it allows for the anticipated to make its way through in an manner while a bit chaotic also as an underlining organization to it.

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blog | where am i?

In the spring of 2009 I traveled to New Orleans to document the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and its outcome four and a half years later. The context of the investigation was about the idea of a “natural disaster� and what it can actually mean to a city. Other than the brute force of the storm and the physical destruction that happened in the moments of its impact, the long term ramifications are as much a disaster and have been charged in the realms of social, political and cultural disrepair. Is nature then more than the earth, wind and sea?

Human nature can then trace back to natural disasters of cultural and social unease just as much as the way hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, and earthquakes can disrupt our world.

This then led to the question of the aesthetics and outcomes of a disaster and the city. The freeways that split the black bottom neighborhood as well as the riots began to tear Detroit apart with just as much force as a category 5 hurricane. The outcome looks much the same. Of these four photographs, two are from New Orleans while the others from Detroit. The worn outcome of both cities with two very different starting trajectories leads me to wonder what are the tipping points of other sites that too end up with the same characteristics? When do the stories divert and when do they converge? So when both places end up looking so much the same, sometimes I wonder... where am I?

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Blog | mined When I was eight years old I took an expedition with my family out west. One of the stops along the way was the Black Hills in South Dakota. With my small Olympus 35mm camera I took these pictures only knowing then that this was a “cool” place of mystery and possibilities. I collected some mica flakes, took some photos and crept just close enough to see the the dark interiors while being warned of the possibility of a collapse. I now really doubt that my eight year old frame might add enough stress to these structures for collapse. Many of them have been in an abandoned state for nearly a century. The Black Hills Mining Museum says, “Many mines were established during the early years of the boom (1870’s) and many played out quickly. Most of them closed in the very early 1900’s due to the lack of high grade ore and increasing costs” These structures are currently sitting dormant within the Black Hills and across numerous other landscapes in America. “As the American western landscape is being reclaimed, it continues to spawn ideas of exploration, expansion and discovery, technological domination, and transformation... The western United States currently holds over 200,000 abandoned and active mines covering millions of acres and tens of thousands of square miles. Funding for future federal and state reclamation will make this ongoing infrastructural project one of the largest- in terms of scale and spending- in the history of the United States”. -Alan Berger Reclaiming the American West. Each abandoned place like the one I discovered when I was eight rests within or outside a community parceled smaller than that of the great American West. Each of these smaller interventions leads to new possibilities with its contributions beyond a tourist hot spot. Can these small buildings set in the wilderness become excavation stations, surveillance outposts, or a water folly? As mining resources had diminished these places were walked away from but it may be possible to walk the site again with a fresh approach and new technology to elicit more from the site again finding richness in the reclaimed architecture of this landscape.

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BLOg | 13 WAYS OF LOOKINg AT A BLACKBIRD BY WALLACE STEvENS

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I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.

II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.

III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

Iv A man and a woman Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. v I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

vI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. vII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? vIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

Ix When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.

x At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. xI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. xII The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying. xIII It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

Blog | don’t believe billy In a break in his career with excess downtime, Bill Geerhart began to write letters posing as his inner child “Billy”.

He wrote to numerous people and groups asking simple but relevant questions in the voice of a child. These letters have been published inLittle Billy’s Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child’s Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered. This is one letter and response: Makes you wonder how far an author can go...

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Blog | a con and the mark Context 1. text surrounding word or passage: the words, phrases, or passages that come before and after a particular word or passage in a speech or piece of writing and help to explain its full meaning 2. surrounding conditions: the circumstances or events that form the environment within which something exists or takes place Con 1. Short for “confidence trick” a fraudulent scheme by gaining ones confidence.

2. Against a proposition, pro’s and con’s 3. Prefix to apply notion of similarity Text 1. main body of work mainly in words that have been written down, typed, or printed

While situating thesis within the context of relevant systems, characteristics revealed themselves in multiple sites. Utilizing the play on words that has thread itself throughout the process, context rather than site has expressed bits of site otherwise unseen.

In the practice of a confidence trick, commonly known as a “con” the character of the con man exploits characteristics of the “mark” for an outcome that would not have evolved from either individually. The ability to navigate weak points and divert them into productive outcomes is in the hands of the artist. While each artist may have a style to the craft, part of the skill is the camouflage of the practice as to not get caught. The filmCatch Me If You Can showcases the life of Frank Abagnale Jr. and his endeavors as a con artist playing the art of impersonation. Although the character and place may change in each situation Frank is still himself, abiding by his own set of rigor to carry out these fraudulent acts.

In Site as Thesis the goal is much the same. Finding a layer of rigor that may be camouflaged in an outer layer that may begin to relate to each context. While the first two sites proposed might be considered context and their characteristics are the marks onto which to carry my con artist style. I may then find myself flying from place to place (Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles) impersonating a thesis that produces an outcome that neither artist nor mark could create alone.

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House as Thesis

Sketchbook

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Terrain Vague | Resources and Notes

Program as Thesis

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Paradigm Map | Thesis Statement

HOUSE | Lexicon discussion notes: The deeper investigation of specificity can propel the opportunities of the specific site.

What level are you working at? Detail, system, social, technique Find out where to focus research What is your attitude about the work?

Where does the interest lie? Is it strategic?

Is it about Detroit? Site specific, portable ideas?

Relevant to program - flush through other programs Specific about the territory Cultural, political occupations of detroit Agents in the work “grey zone� anything that goes above the surface depends on what is below the surface.�

Find the opportunities.

SITE discussion notes: Both sites offer benefits and drawbacks.

Abandon: Scope of your role

Design a large story In use/Abandon: context is then relevant Develop a way to pick the site. Potential of finding ones closer to the middle of the two extremes proposed Time of materials and attention Interesting stories of people being there in the first place Are the sites dopplegangers? Relationships between the two sites having a conversation between each other.

Story between multiple sites? Where do you intervene with a ruin, place and time? What if its not bad to be abandoned? Interest to unpack two sites in situations Find more histories of both if not more...

Make it present as a layer of reference on drawings for notation Expand the role of the author What are the perspectives of ruins? Develop the eyes towards the spectrum in the middle Create a narrative as two characters possibly as doppleganger to charge and relate to one another Layers of history of the sties and notice nodes of intersections and divergent parts.

Urban Lab : UIC Chicago River Historical Ruins with ties to culture and story or program ruins that no longer use their needs with no ties to story.

Determine the ways of drawing notating and making that is relevant and can amplify the focused ideas at stake in the thesis Making the variable stable and its normative properties that may or may not be in crisis Be conscious of the material palette and scales. What tangible conditions might be mediated. Materials by design.

PROGRAM discussion notes: numerous sites and act on it. just do it. perecs acts of language. types and scales of site. framework: performance, operations, script/logic.

Sequence, event of content.

What are the actors at play and how are they arranged?

Paradigm map discussion notes: 76 |

What is what you take away at as the next move?

Physicality moves forward the action of the word through tangible objects Start seeing moves everywhere.

Inter connectivity. Method of working - conscious material and mind.

Case review transcript: K: I think it’s interesting, we could start to have another conversation where we might group the projects in terms of metaphor versus a kind of device. In some cases people have had objects in which the case tries to embody the thesis, in this project its much closer to the family of the apparatus and the device. I like the way you called it a toolkit. It’s much more a case for the designer and talks about a methodology rather than being another proxy for the thesis.

C: I think it has the ability to start to get pushed into that realm of how your manipulating other things also. In terms of how you’re going to be taking this to each site and what each site would end up doing to this object itself or what your fictionalizing of what is really from the site and what is not. This could be a whole story unto itself with the fake postcards and everything else within.

K: It comes back to the conversation in a little different way than with Robert, which is can you think of some of the artifacts being about the process of the thesis itself and what devices you might need to make to be able to work on your thesis. Not only representational devices but also different tools much like a painter would have a kit of brushes, paints and so forth. So you would actually need this to do your work.

Andrea Zittle would make prototypical structures and furniture and habitation, but another thing she does is make clothing and calls them uniforms. Are there things you need to design. Is the design of thesis part of the thesis? Is the design of the artifacts allowing you to do the thesis. So you might actually use this as a methodology because part of your thesis will be literary.

You might use this as a methodology to make things as well as write and draw. So its not representational at all, I like how it moves our of that. So its sits within the group of brief cases but I like how this was actually designed specifically for your thesis.

Volume as Thesis Discussion Notes: Statement: An exploration through a new process of site analysis that imbeds the works of fictions and literary devices to assists in a new set of operation. Places are then reinformed not only by exploiting their own characteristics but by telling it through a technique that calls to question its authenticity.

Walter Benjamin: Arcades Project Rob Covits: Ice Fishing in Gimli Write site as a set rather than individuals Describe how the set of sites operates in the thesis Understand not only the description of list but the logistical ins and outs of site.

Image credits: Diller + Scofidio | 44, 45 Bill Geerhart | 73 BLT + Associates | 72 IrishNYC | 25 (top left) Magnesium Photos | 23 New York Times | 25 (bottom), 31 Philadelphia Museum of Art | 43 Adam Smith | 17 (bottom), 71 Wired Magazine | 27 Note: uncredited photographs were taken by the author, many of which during situationist type wanderings. The result of such errors from the path resulted in the capture of those things not instantaneously apparent with a place.

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