Parallel Practices by Matthew Ridgeway

PA R A L LEL PRACTICES

THESIS By Matthew Ridgeway

AC K NOWLEDGEMENTS

This work developed uncomfortably. I wish to thank those who helped perpetuate the work and who gave encouragement.

Thesis Advisor, James Bassett Ashton Hamm

TA BLE OF CONTENTS

Opening

Sketches and Photographs

Painted Photographs

Painting

Assemblages

Construct

Architecture Proposal

Closing

OPENING

This thesis is a series of works that speculate on what may be foundational in our encounter with the world. Begun as open questions, they reveal qualities of perception and representation through the means of an architect. Sketches, photographs, paintings, assemblages, and constructs collect as a series of practices parallel to architecture. Leaving the contingencies of architecture, they return to architecture with a sense of the world.

SK E TC H E S A N D PH OTO G R A PHS The sketches and photographs that follow represent places. Reflecting on the composition, technique, and qualities of each reveals themes of perception.

In the first sketch, narrow steps twist up a rise. Undergrowth settles around the steps. Two trees frame the rise. In the second sketch, wide steps lead up to a balustrade, framed by massive columns. A hall draws within the frame towards an altar. Vaulting encloses these elements.

Here, framing is the perceptual organization of each place as imagined and each sketch as constructed. Relative to the horizon, steps are an immanent invitation to the body. The horizon is the far limit of perception. It may serve as a datum through which an organization reveals itself. In the sketch below the steps are framed directly towards the horizon, while in the sketch above, the integral framing of the steps and slope organize the imagined place. In this way, both the steps and horizon invite us to two different places.

In the first sketch, vegetation settles into folds of hills. A wide path leads out to scattered trees that rise along the horizon. A roadway crosses in from the right. In the second sketch, branches tangle through a copse, towards the crest of a hillock. A runnel curls around its edge.

In the sketch above, the ground is perceived sequentially; the hills are profiles, presenting multiple secondary horizons. The ground is always “over there”. In the sketch below, the ground inclines and warps; its single horizon is mute, occluded by layers of branches. This horizontal and vertical framework thickens the distance between “here” and “there”.

In the first sketch, buildings enclose an alley crossed overhead by telephone wires. The buildings frame trees beyond the alley. In the second sketch, a stream cuts through patches of grass and scrub. Trees on its banks locate the stream while another line of vegetation finds the horizon.

In the first sketch, buildings press towards the sides of the page, revealing a boundary implicit in every sketch. Not only does each sketch have a structural frame, but each also has a conceptual frame. This sense of “frame” clears away concrete contingencies of place to foreground imaginations of place. This capacity to frame is a capacity of imagination. The structure of each sketch – and so the structure of each imagined place – builds itself this way, as an invitation to wander. From their frame, the buildings fold into the page, receding to the horizon. This frame imagines the carving of a place between ground and sky. The other, framed internally by two lines of vegetation (horizon and stream), reveals itself as a dispersive place; each patch of ground leads one to another, peripherally. This frame imagines the expansiveness of the fields, trees, and stream.

In the first photograph, water cleaves the earth. Light escapes the shadow of boulders to reveal water crashing past a fallen log. In the second photograph, buildings carve a canyon from the sky. Trees mass in the background, between ground and sky.

The frame of each photograph orders the ground and sky, as gravity orders each place. In the photograph on the left the ground is framed by fallen logs. Water rips away the groundâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface to reveal its fragility. This gravity tears downward from an absent sky. In the right the horizon reveals the ground and sky. Oriented towards the horizon, built elements release from the draw of gravity, ascending upward to the sky and outward to the horizon. This is the sedimentation of a gravity that clarifies.

Underground, bodies surrender to silt. Gravestones gather the slow seep of the sun. They order a place of death among trees. In the photograph below, a rock is wedged between two boulders that lean across the frame from the right. A log collides with the boulders as water falls past.

Amid the tumble of roots, gravestones carry on the bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fight against gravity. The stones are taken from the earth; the bodies are brought back to it. The second photograph reveals the gravestoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kin: striated rock. Revealed by light from above, the rock emerges dramatically precarious. In these photographs, light, rather than lines, serves to order.

PA I N T E D PH OTO G R A PH S In the painted photographs that follow, qualities arises amid the photograph as representation, the composition as a spatial description, and the entire work as an artifact. The painted photographs are motivated by the intersection of sketches and photographs, and the emergent qualities found there. Each is an intervention an a site.

In the composition above, a small square is painted at the edge of water and sky. Doubling the horizon, a white acrylic line crosses the photograph, above the square. In the composition, below a large white rectangle hovers over gravestones. In tension with the frame, it compresses the foreground and releases the photo above.

In the first composition, the solid white line gathers the expansiveness of water and sky. The tiny square implies distance. On the natural horizon but painted like the new horizon, it places each in tension against the other. The white rectangle gathers light - an opaque density that masks what it covers. Amidst the composition, it re-frames the photograph. The proportion and position of this rectangle suggests compressive forces, while the hanging of the white square above suggests tensile forces.

In the first composition, lines of acrylic, emerging from the skewed logs, streak on top of boulders. In the second composition, a rectangle spans the foreground, while a line crosses above it. A collaged element frames the trees, sky, and ground around it.

In the composition on the right, the photograph is largely absolved of its representational qualities. With paint, a new work emerges, free of analogies to place. In the composition on the right, the painted elements overlay the photo as a distinct composition. Stretched to the edge of the frame, the painted elements remove themselves from the timbre of the photograph. The tones of the photograph are only residual.

PA I N T I N G Each of the previous practices framed an existing site. The painting that follows frames itself, and structures its own origin. The first stroke of paint on the plywood births an imagined space. From the pallette to either edge of the plywood the paint gathers itself into shapes that fly off and sink into the surface of plywood.

The edge of each painted shape seeps onto the surface of plywood. The shapes belie a gravity: the lively blue weight of two circles, a sedentary mass of dark rectangles, the emergent light of a pale white plane. The rectangles orient the painting parallel to the surface, while the white plane opens the painting obliquely, through the surface. Relative to these orientations, other shapes float or orbit through the paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s space.

The emergent sense of gravity found in the previous works unfolds over the plywood surface of the painting. A bodily imagining of gravity orders the paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s space. It is sensed in the opacity and color of shapes composed relative to the frame. Each element distinguishes itself from its field through its edge - liquid or sharp, on bare plywood or over other painted elements. The painting orients oblique or parallel to its field. As a sort of horizon, this surface serves to preface perceptions of the painting.

Two grey rectangles create a field over the plywood surface. A purple volume opens obliquely over this field. Yellow circles tend at once towards both stasis and rotation, relative to the field. Muted colors, precise brushstrokes, and distinct edges solidify the compositoin. Their assertions are confident, but reserved.

The clarity of edges begets ambiguity. The edge of an element is the boundary within which the field is absent. Yet, the edge may also be a boundary from which the field irrupts. These designations strike across the flat surface to emerge one against the other. This gravity is viscous. The momentum of the elements and their field continue, projecting to horizons: the edges of the plywood. The yellow circle and its white line seep beyond the frame of the grey field. They find a curious place, neither field of paint nor yet horizon of frame.

AS S E M B L AG E S In the assemblages that follow, equilibrium manifests physically. Simultaneously, the composition of each confronts equilibrium as an aesthetic phenomenon. In this way, the assemblages may be perceived to represent gravity. The assemblages transmute the imagined space of the painting into physical and phenomenal space.

A piece of reclaimed barnwood balances atop a concrete cylinder. Another, slender piece is propped upright by twine. This piece is precarious; only a narrow point rests on the barnwood base. The twine lengthens, drawn down by a metal weight. As the twine moves through and around the barnwood elements, lines of tension seem to gather around points of compression. Residual holes in the horizontal barnwood are points through which twine runs to resolve its forces.

Each element is re-formed in the assemblage. The larger piece of wood reveals it surfaces and edges, as twine wraps through and around it. The slender pieceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ascent reveals a vertical element against the pull of gravity. The twine becomes a line that sketches space and force. The necessary resolution of forces through the string reveal a residual volume. The forces sketch an imagined space over the surface of wood. These movements are all gathered under the force of gravity. The assemblage adjudicates the inclination of gravity; entropy is arrested to reframe the elements in a representation of gravity.

A piece of reclaimed barnwood is held horizontally in the crook of a bent steel wire and the tension of a piece of twine. The steel wire displaces its forces in the hung weight at its end as the wire flexes through the barnwood to its triangular base. The twine anchors at this base and displaces its force in the concrete cylinder.

The forces in this assemblage seem to disperse, rather than gather. As soon as we try to follow one, it slips away to be inflected along other lines or resolved in other elements. Steel wire extends from the wood to the ground and the metal weight. Twine crosses through the wood to the steel wire and the concrete cylinder. The wood is in tension, not compression, and the steel wire â&#x20AC;&#x201C; seemingly tensile â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is at moments in compression. It is along these projecting lines that the assemblage gathers space, peripherally.

CO N S T RU C T The construct gathers the qualities of imagined and physical spaces emergent in the previous works, and tests these through a model. The construct envisages the ordering of perception in phenomenal forces and articulate organization, revealed in the plan drawing. As a model, it confronts imagined space in a play of scales and analogies that move the work towards architecture.

The construct began with a plywood base, an aluminum cylinder, and thread. Acrylic paint, a voided circle, a cast-plaster volume, and a hardware detail populate the arrangement. Shadows introduce a final element. Perceived in different orientations, elements imply different forces. The construct reveals itself through its documentation in a series of photographs, framed from fixed orientations.

Elements arrange in proximities and adjacencies that motivate forces. Equilibrium characterizes a dynamic system in a state of balance. In the construct, the precarious qualities of elements and their implied forces reveal an equilibrium.

The acrylic rectangle directs a rotation of elements towards the far edge of the plywood surface. The circular void arcs across the surface, held in tension to the aluminum cylinder by the line of acrylic. The plaster volume passes through the plywood frame, held in tension to the hardware detail by cast-in-place thread. The cylinder and hardware - as two points of rotation - are individually static, but when perceived in sequence along the perimeter, they pull on one another.

The dislocation of these points disperses our expectation of a single, fixed center. These rotations reveal the plywood base as a frame; rotations are only implied as the frame eclipses the plywood surface. The far edge over which the plaster slips is a horizon. Lying delicately across the edge of the plywood, it crosses the horizontal limit of the surface.

As the voided circle and the plaster volume project their rotations across the plywood surface, two regions of stasis emerge. Three points along the surfacesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; perimeter organize the first: the aluminum cylinder, the hardware detail, and the intersection of the thread with the ground. These points pull the space of the construct towards the plywood frame and order a region of stasis. The circular void establishes another region of stasis. This region is oriented centrally and bound by the frame and the acrylic rectangle.

Stasis emerges as a phenomenal region. The construct is not in stasis, rather, stasis is implied across adjacent actions. Regions of stasis emerge as traces left by forces implied by the position of elements.

As the thread spans from the plywood ground to the top of the aluminum cylinder, and back from the cylinder to the hardware detail, it encloses the first stasis region. It appears as either a roof or a wall, depending on the segment of thread perceived and the orientation from which it is perceived. Intersection details articulate the trajectory of the thread as it traces a perimeter within the plywood frame. This perimeter is maintained by the acrylic rectangle as it approaches the far end of the plywood surface.

Each detail (the opening of the cylinder; the pin-hole through the cylinder; the screw, bolt and washer in the plywood ground; and the pin-hole through the plywood ground) reveals and enables a different sort of inflection. As the continuous thread stretches through these points it reconstitutes the order of the piece. Rotations, elements and stasis regions assume new ambiguities. These arrangements draw the edge of the plywood onto the surface of the plywood as a perimeter that prefaces the frame of the construct. The multiplicity and intersection of these actions maintains equilibrium.

ARC H I T E C T U R E PRO PO S A L The architecture proposal that follows draws observations and qualities from the previous works and tests them through the field of Architecture.The proposal observes building elements as edges and frames. It characterizes space through implied forces that are the traces of elments and programmatic conditions. It considers the precise composition of the construct and opens it back towards unaticapted consequences of light and shadow.

The architecture takes an existing program and volume as its material. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Green Valley Bookfairâ&#x20AC;? includes two large buildings that house over 500,000 books for two-week periods throughout the year. The first building is the main entrance to the bookfair, and is the subject of this architecture proposal. The second building emerges adjacent but separate from the first.

Inverted images of potential roof profiles establish the floor as a horizon and locate the central axis of the building. The roof profile moves in relation to this axis. Its effects determine many of the qualities of the proposal. The columnar grid accommodates the movement of bookshelves and access to the second building.

A small field of grass grows around the perimeter of the building. Rising in this field, the the foundation turns up as a plinth. Above the plinth, horizontal battens run the length of the side elevation. A terrace rises from the ground outside towards the concrete floor inside.

A low wall passes the field of grass towards an oak tree. The terrace lifts from the earth, rising against the field of grass, toward the the inside. The plinth is level with the horizon, between ground and sky. From the frame of the plinth, the sky is carried down by columns. The roof cleaves through the void between plinth and sky.

This final column arrests the momentum gathered from the preceeding columns. It clears space against walls and beyond bookshelves in which people may sit and read. The walls are edges between outside and inside. Meeting at a corner, they become a frame. The bed of gravel separating the building from the field of grass parallels the frame of the walls. This frame is penetrated by a large opening, whose casement is inset in the wall. We see past the corner of the building, rather than through a directed frame. Our gaze passes outward, along the horizon.

This corner space passes through the front faรงade across the field of grass, marking a return. The terrace and plinth constructed the edge between ground and sky, and framed the outside from the inside. The outside is now permitted to penetrate, across the frame of the large opening as the window sill nearly brushes the field of grass. The smaller window shifts from the space of the central axis towards the corner of the building, as the column gathers space by carrying the weight of the roof down to the floor.

The roof profile compresses the entry corridor. It rises towards the perimeter where light cascades down along its inner surface. Along the front elevation, openings permit horizontal light and views. A corridor of books runs parallel to line of columns, along the one perimeter. The height and profile of the roof permit light to enter from above, wondrous. It revels in the imagined space seeping from the books.

The opening of the passage to the other building imposes an alternate diagram of the space. The passage is evidence of the extension of interior space. Now, the wall masks, veiling rather than only containing. It becomes an interior elevation through which we depart.

CLOSING

Reflecting on the architecture proposal reveals emergent qualities that follow the contours of parallel practices. Phenomenal and physical forces resolve in equilibrium, edges meet as a frame, and the horizon prefaces perceptual encounters. And yet, though built from contingences, the archtiecture is more than its constintuent themes. It developed towards unintended consequences. The architecture only reveals in images the light and shadow of its breath.