Performative Methodologies. Unknown knowns; Addition to a Donald Rumsfeld quote:
Performative Methodologies
Performative Programs
‘...there are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.’ (Federal News Service, 2002)
Zizek proposes that there should be another category; unknown knowns (Slavoj Zizek:
The Reality of the Virtual, 2004).
These unknown knowns are all the factors that frame our subconscious and influence our behaviour, for example: the tools we use, the methodologies that we are taught by, and the society that we live in. Therefore, when we respond to a brief from a client, we do so in ways that are filtered through our unknown knowns, and not in direct relationship to the clients. The outcome is as much a product of these unknown knowns as it is a response to context, site and brief.
Journey into the Unknown Knowns. An attempt to expose the process of design, allowing the performance to direct the brief, context and proposal. ‘…discourse is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said.’ (Barad, 2003)
Physical Programs
Notational Re-readings
Projective Dialogues
Projective Narratives
Performative Projections
‘The monkey must die.’
A fantastical imaginary story is used to reenact the previous projects, applying a different set of constraints to the exploration. The limitations of a single type of discourse and a single form of representation are discarded, leaving a variety of modes of exploration to understand the constraints unknowingly imposed onto previous projects.
Performative Programs. A Journey. History; an invitation from Poole Borough Council to propose alternative architectural methods to develop a vehicle works depot located between the nature reserve of Hatch Pond and the Hamworthy Industrial Estate in Poole, Dorset. The site is the base for the maintenance of all the Council’s refuse trucks, highway and parks maintenance vehicles.
Proposition. This proposition, set 200 years in the future, used the daily journeys of Poole Borough Council’s waste management operatives and their refuse trucks as anchors for a performative design process. The two processes are mirror images: the operatives and their dustbin lorries journey through Poole, carrying out the Borough’s municipal waste management strategy by recovering valuable materials from the waste produced by Poole’s inhabitants, while the performance of the design process takes the form of a journey in which the value of materials inform the projective manifestation of the design. The design explorations thus form an analogue to the explorations of the Poole environs by the refuse trucks and their operatives. A similar virtual journey is also undertaken by the site, through explorations of the site’s influence and reciprocal interactions with the surrounding town.
Physical Programs. Recordings.
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Diagrammatic analysis of the unique connection the site has to the town through the journeys its agents have throughout the borough. This is taking the form of an animation that overdraws and diagrammatically lifts elements and transforms them from a series of stills taken along one route taken by a dustbin lorry. This forms a graphical structure to the project. The intention is to use the animation as a sketch pad so whilst it is recording the circular (infinite) route of the lorry other ideas and concepts will be introduced/ added along the way. (Finite) elements of work will be extracted at certain times and junctions along the route.
Projective Dialogues {1}. The initial proposal was determined by two complementary expressions of humanity’s relationships with materials, and their use: 1. cradle-to-cradle – constructing in such a way that the materials used are easily separated and can be infinitely recycled, and 2. build-to-last – using materials and methods that are designed to have long life spans. The exterior utilised the build-to-last method whilst its ‘interior’ shell was designed to be continually reused and remade. These justifications only told half the story, the design was still influenced by an unknown ‘other’. Further exploration was required to explore the relationships between designer, tools and methodologies. A continuation of a reiterative design process that advocates a continual reworking of form, spaces and ideas as opposed to relying on divine inspiration and some mythical creative god. Hard graft, rather than navel gazing {please refer to animation for a snapshot of this process}.
Projective Narratives {1}. Establishing form before programme to create an outline for the project by creating a scaleless, flexible model which was then taken on a journey and recorded, enabling multiple variations and combinations to be investigated through a playful process. The dislocation of the model from its context provided the first step towards accessing the abstract ‘other’. Through the recordings of the model’s journey, a scale was settled upon. The journey is not limited to the site, but expands the original scope and travels through a range of topographies and situations at different scales. The increased range of scales was to explore the interconnectedness of things, as in Haraway’s Cat’s Cradle. Things do not happen in isolation; evolution is not a single line of survival of the fittest, it is a tangled web of influences (Haraway, 1994).
Notational Re-Readings {1}. Re-scaled Modelling. To explore this ‘other’, a second model repeats the themes of the plot outline: scaleless, but at a higher resolution. The lack of scale maintains access to the ‘open space of virtualities’ (Zizek, 2008), while a higher resolution offers glimpses of the possible realities that might coalesce from these virtualities. Frames, skins and connections are introduced, and variations of these are explored. Photographing the model creates images that could become an interior, a building, a corridor or a door handle.
Notational Re-Readings {2}. Notated Model Space. Moving out of model space and onto paper space. Using pen and ink to draw over the combinations of the previous model journeys, creating abstract landscapes, building ‘scapes’, interiors and details. The drawings emerge and develop from similar starting points: a redrawing on top of old, each time drawing something different from the models. Abstracting new potentialities from three dimensions; creating physical two-dimensional objects of three-dimensional forms. It starts an iterative, cyclical process of modelling, photography and drawing. The images are not scanned in flat, but are photographed from different angles allowing various combinations of light, texture and line. The room, drawing surface and light conditions, elements that are usually edited out of the design process, are allowed to influence the outcomes.
Projective Narratives {2}. Cut Scenes, Moments on a Journey. The performance is the project. At this stage, there are no intended targets. It is a projection without a screen to play out on. The introduction of postcards is the first stage of altering the narrative, and architecturally directing the project. The postcards each freeze the process in a moment in time and distil all that has gone before; notes sent to and from the earlier journeys of models and drawings. Their purpose is to create an ‘other’ context for the project, to develop and become the site, brief and program.
POST CARD
THE ADDRESS TO BE W RITTEN ON THIS SIDE
The postcards do not research what was there. They are an attempt to retrieve what is not known, but known to be there. In the manner of Deleuze and Guattari’s Body without Organs (Deleuze & Guattari, 1984)and Austin’s performative utterances (Austin, 1955), the act of making the model and the ‘re-imaginations’ of the postcards are reenactments, where the process of creating becomes the project. POST CARD
THE ADDRESS TO BE W RITTEN ON THIS SIDE
POST CARD
T HE A DDRE S S TO B E WRI T T E N ON T HI S S I DE
Projective Dialogues {2}. TriALOGUEs. This stage in the project combines all the elements previously explored. It is the turning point of the project where a narrative starts to take shape. The postcards are sent back from other moments in time with descriptions of site, landscapes and people. Unlike Projective Dialogue {1}, this transforms the brief. It grabs glimpses of the unexplored possibilities in previous work, culminating in a morphing of the brief into the following: From vehicle repair depot to luxury spa for millionaire dustbin women. This plot device enables the project to fall on both sides of Van Toorn’s Quasi-Object: looking at the building as a product of the relationships between site, landscapes and people, and as an agent for the production and mediation of those relationships (Van Toorn, 2008). A projection of a future where the people who harvest and control valuable materials are the pinnacle of society. Waste management becomes an exclusive profession, and those who practise the profession become the new Vestal Virgins, a powerful neo-priesthood responsible for the town’s well-being. The site transforms from a vehicle depot at the fringes of an industrial estate, to become an enclave for a new class of aristocracy: a place where woman and machine can be pampered and renewed, in a building to display and advertise the profession’s status and wealth.
Performative Projections. Exposure. Solid volumes discarded as being visually divergent to the ebb-and-flow, reciprocal nature of the project as well as structurally unrealistic - the structure required to support and construct the volumes would make the interiors impractical. A return to showing the unknown knowns by exposing the building’s inner workings. A steel structure, which is also a service channel, is threaded through the site and building. This forms the backbone of the building, allowing water to be transported around the building. It is the middle section of a water cycle: starting from Hatch Pond, water is naturally filtered and purified through a combination of a series of weirs and bank filtration gravel beds. Water for the baths is then heated by large composting piles to the rear of the site. Once the water has been used it is re-filtered through a grey water recovery system of gravel and reed beds, and fed back into Hatch Pond.
Performative Projections. Cross Section. An intentional blurring of boundaries: the building, landscape and the pond flow into one another. The internal concrete structure is sat upon, fixed to; swum in. The timber exoskeleton flows over this, providing seating, walls floors and roofs. The water from the pond is drawn into the building, flowing through, pausing, moving and eventually returning to the pond. The timber exoskeleton only partially screens the functions within, much is still on show and connected directly to a newly extended Hatch Pond nature reserve. The building and its context are no longer separate elements, but join together as a merged whole of park, vehicle depot and baths.
Performative Projections. Plans. The ritual of bathing in public. Everything is on show, from the vehicles to the act of bathing. The building is literally constructed from the community’s cast-offs, but instead of transporting these materials to distant corners and hiding the scale of our disposable society, it celebrates and exhibits these materials. The building filters the materials that come to it, elevating and polishing these into art, sculpture and architecture. The dustbin lorry operative goes through a similar process at the end of their day. Instead of a quick cigarette and a mug of tea at the end of their shift, they now luxuriate in their collected wealth. On finishing their day, they put their thoroughbred machine to bed in its own stable, where teams of people are eager to help maintain the vehicles with the hope that one day they may also be accepted to the dust lorry teams. Once their vehicle is ‘put to bed’, the dustbin lorry operative can get on with rejuvenating themselves: a long hot shower, then a sauna to relax the muscles, perhaps a massage or just a long soak in a personal outside ‘onsen’. Exercise can be taken in a lap pool and then a communal bath with friends to catch up on the day. A quick dip in the cold plunge pool to refresh and build up an appetite, and then it is on to dinner at the restaurant. And finally a couple of digestifs after dinner, whilst waiting for the chauffeur to whisk them home. The dustbin lorry operatives are envied, and the job, people and building become heights to aspire to. The processes that enable this to become a futurepossible reality are exposed; instead of burying our relationship with waste, it elevates and exhibits it.
Site Location Plan.
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Site Plan.
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1. Hatch Pond Nature Reserve 2 Hamworthy Industrial Estate 3. Hatch Pond Road 4. School 5. Gravel Hill 6. Housing Estate 7. Spa/ Bath House 8. New tunnel and underground parking 9. Balancing Pond 10. Extended nature reserve
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Long section 1. Hot Pool 2. Entrance 3. Atrium 4. Massage Rooms 5. Sun Roof 6. Underground road/ Vehicle Workshop and overnight parking 7. Water pump 8. Lap Pool 9. Outdoor Pool 10. Changing Rooms 11. Terrace 12. Relaxation Room 13. Hatch Pond 14. Pond
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Site Plan
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1. Channel for water filtering weirs. Water in. 2. Channel for water filtering weirs. Water out. 3. Extent of excavation for new pond. 4. Temporary coffer dam to enable construction of foundations. 5. Extent of excavation for underground vehicle workshop.
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Basement Plan. 16 9 11
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1. Hot Pool {Indoor} 2. Entrance 3. Lift Lobby. 4. Massage Rooms 5. Lifts 6. Underground road 7. Vehicle Workshop and overnight parking 8. Lap Pool 9. Outdoor Pool 10. Store 11. Outside seating area 12. Pond 13. Hatch Pond 14. Nature Reserve 15. Hot pool {Outside} 16. Warm Pool {Inside} 17. Water Outlet Weirs.
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First Floor + Plan.
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1. Changing Rooms 2 Private Hot tub and relaxation room 3. Plant 4. Entrance Lobby 5. Reception 6. Outline of Dining Room 7. Balcony 8. Lifts 9. Hatch Pond 10. Toilets 11. Terrace 12. Green Roof 13. Landscaping 14. Pond 15. Corridor
Detail 1. Precast Reinforced Concrete 2. 390mmx390mm seasoned timber 3. Corten Steel Secondary Member 4. Prestressed Steel Cross Brace 5. Steel fixing for Cross Brace 6. Seconandary Steel bolted to frame on site 7. Primary Steel Frame clad in Corten Steel 8. Pool
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Detail Cross section 1. Indoor Pool 2. Outdoor Hot Tub (onsen) 3. Relaxation room 4. External steam terrace 5. Steel primary structure 6. Steel secondary structure 7. Steel cross bracing 8 Timber outer skin (not weather proof) 9. Precast concrete composite section 10. Triple Glazing 11. Piles 12. Concrete pad foundations to steel 13. Balcony
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