Dwelling in Between-ness Nicole Wiznitzer, B. Arch 2014 Rhode Island School of Design
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE....................................................................................................7
CHAPTER ONE THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF BETWEEN-NESS...........................9
CHAPTER TWO THE GEOMETRY OF CONIC SECTIONS.....................................35
CHAPTER THREE THE MEETING OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND GEOMETRY IN THE JEWISH SANCTUARY..........................................................49
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CONCLUSION...........................................................................................77
Preface Liminal: of or relating to a sensory threshold; being in an intermediate state; from the latin root limen (threshold, cross-piece, sill). What does it mean to inahbit a between place? Between me and you. Between birth and death. Between yesterday and tomorrow. Between the sun and the moon. Between North and South. All occupied space is liminal and I search to describe what stasis allows for dwelling in constant transformation. The following body of work illuminates that without liminality, there is no such thing as being human. Physical existence relies on moments of temporary suspension where other things become possible. To be human is to be in-between. Architecture is liminal and we dwell in between-ness.
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Chapter One: The Phenomenology of Between-ness I begin the process with a sketch. Modeled after hyperbolic curves that reach towards each other, I investigate the nature of edge conditions and the charged space between. Expanding the diagram illuminates a palpable relationship between its manifestations in two-dimensions, three-dimensions, and the embodied between-ness experience. What is the nature of the threshold? What creates a sense of stasis within which we inhabit flow and transformation? The works in chapter one are presented as an unfolding of related questions. I recombine, dissect, expand, imagine, and experience. I seek out the phenomenon of liminality itself, not representations of it. I aim to create a constellation of ideas that propell the project into chapters two and three. PHENOMENOLOGY OF BETWEEN-NESS/9
The condition between two fixed points is dynamically porous through materiality and light. The linear members are manipulated by the form and movement of the middle perpendicular pieces.
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Table-4-2 Concept Presentation 1
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Water Table Concept Presentation 2
Eclipse: an obscuration of light between forms. The sun and the moon eclipse each other as they move in space and time, registered by the viewer’s perspective and location. The viewer’s perception of the relationship between the forms and light creates the eclipse. All objects eclipse each other in space depending upon a viewer’s relationship to them and to light.
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The space between forms is a pressurized space. How do objects hold each other? How do we hold each other like two curves hold each other?
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These forms eclipse each other as the perspective point orbits around. Their perceived relationship alters depending upon the viewer’s movement. Through constructed drawings, I explore the relationship of the two-dimensional, the threedimensional, and a viewer’s embodied experience of forms in space.
Forms Eclipsing Each Other 1
The viewer mediates between two-dimensional flattening, (eclipsing of forms) and threedimensional depth perception (knowledge of the distance between forms).
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Forms Eclipsing Each Other 2
What is the nature of the threshold? The point of view shifts from exterior to interior, to a study of the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. The journey through the entrance of the Basilica is sliced into frames and reassembed into a new physical experience. Forms eclipse each other through the layering of transparencies.
The interior of the Basilica is lined with mosaics while the threshold leading to it is built of brick. The doorway acts as a guiding and locating element in the assembly because the light coming in is of a different quality. Through the layering of frames, the light aids in registration.
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Visual depth perception is a result of two eyes that perceive two images and the images overlap, providing depth of field. The overlapping zone deepens the world.
There is a relationship between the two-dimensional, the three-dimensional, and embodied experience.
Layering the frames of threshold leads inside the Basilica. The point of view is fully one of interiority.
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Case Study: Basilica
The basilica is liminal in its simultaneous two-dimensionality, threedimensionality, and relation to the material world. One inhabits between arches and domes, within light, between worlds. The basilica acts as a case study of a spatial and phenomenological experience of geometry.
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Basilica 1: Unrolled Interiority
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Basilica 2: Six sections through Basilica 1
I unroll the interior view of the basilica to place ground on all sides; inhabitation occurs between ground and ground. The basilica is inhabited between the arches and the dome. Sections through the unrolled plan show the basilica defined by geometric forms: the arch and the dome.
The program of the basilica is to inhabit liminality.
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How does one three-dimensionally inhabit the liminality of the basilica drawings?
Basilica Inhabitation 1
Basilica Inhabitation 2
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Basilica Inhabitation 3
Alignment of Porosity model and Unrolled Basilica: Two defined points and a pressurized flow between.
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Chapter Two: The Geometry of Conic Sections Following the unfolding of phenomenological questions in chapter one, chapter two returns to study the initial diagram of hyperbolic curves. The hyperbola is part of a set of curves that result from slicing the same cone in multiple ways. The cone and its corresponding geometries are similarly liminal with the Basilica. Inhabitation, through form and imagination, is constructed between its multiplicity of identities. Geometry is used here only after a thorough understanding of its essence. There is a nuanced composition of moves that differentiate the parabola from the ellipse from the hyperbola. I embody the rules of these forms and then choreograph their organization. The geometry brings forth an understanding of potential tangencies between the infinite line and a finite form.
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Suspension: A finite moment in an infinite world.
Suspension 2: Plaster
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Suspension 1: Plexiglass
The hyperbola, the ellipse, and the parabola all result from various cuts through the same cone. The curve is constructed as an envelope of straight lines. Hyperbola: constructed from an exterior focus point and a tangent circle. Ellipse: constructed from two interior focus points. Parabola: constructed from one interior focus point and a tangent line. Ellipses and parabolas are finite; the two branches of the parabola will eventually meet each other. The hyperbola, however, extends infinitely.
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Tangent: The point of meeting without intersecting. Each hyperbola has its own point of tangency to the central circle. The distance of the focus point to the central circle determines the width of the hyperbola.
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The tangent points radiate along the circumference of the circle when their corresponding focus points are on a radial axis.
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Alignment of the hyperbola construction and the unrolled basilica illuminates chapter three: program.
Chapter Three: The Meeting of Phenomenology and Geometry in the Jewish Sanctuary
Templum (Latin): measured sacred space. Makom (Hebrew): place. Beit Knesset (Hebrew): House of Assembly.
The sensory experience of the between and the liminality of conic sections meet in the Jewish Sanctuary. An architecture of tangencies, the Sanctuary illuminates a finite, present tense experience of the infinite. Community gathers to encounter a contained alignment of form, line, time, body, and light.
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Reading the drawing as a section and the linear envelope of the hyperbola as light coming into a space, the Sanctuary constructs a finite framing of the infinite.
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Key Programmatic Components
Natural Light One of the few requirements from the Tamlud states that Jewish sanctuaries must have natural light.
Ner Tamid (Eternal Light) Situated above the Ark, the Ner Tamid is the only light in the Sanctuary that is never extinguished. It represents the Temple flame and God’s eternal presence. This component illustrates parallels between God (the infinite) and the power of light. The Ner Tamid here is manifest as the axes of the hyperbola focus points.
East Directionality Congregants face eastwards, towards Jeruslam, when standing during the service. The only visible interior window of this Sanctuary is directed east.
Interior Circular Progression The Torah is circulated around the Sanctuary for the community after it is retrieved from the Ark and before it is read from the Bima.
Ark The Ark is a cabinet that holds the Torah and is strategically opened and closed to signify certain parts of the service. The Ark in this Sanctuary is suspended and aligned with the window east from the eye of the leader on the Bima.
Bima the Ark. The Bima here is raised to allow light from below to permeate upwards.
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The Bima is a table where the Torah is placed to be read. The leader of the service stands here and directly faces
EAST
SOUTH
WEST
NORTH
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Exterior Elevations
The Ark and the Bima act as the two interior focus points of the ellipse, constructing the floor and ceiling plates within the concrete sphere shell.
Roof and Floor Plans
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The Jewish service is paced. One person starts a slow song as the group gets settled. Orientation, recognition, location, registration, rythm. The crux of the experience arrives in the middle, only after full preparation. Then comes retreat. The approach to the Sanctuary is similarly slow. After walking on a flat path surrounded by tall trees, the path begins to slope downwards. If it is raining, water flows down a channel into the entrance of the Sanctuary in the distance. The path continues with sight of the tall trees around until a roof appears overhead 20 feet from the entrance. Eyes adjust to the darkness with focus on a light ahead shining on the opening. Water drains through the entrance down to a cavity below the floor. Eyes adjust again and the concrete shell slips open to the Sanctuary space.
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Longitudinal Cross Section
The interior experience is defined by direct and diffuse lighting. Two light pipes shine onto the Ark and the Bima while the rest of the space is illuminated by reflected light from the sky above and artificial light below. Water drains from the sloped path to the bottom of the sphere, affecting the nature of the lower reflected light. The Ark is suspended between the floor and ceiling plates. Located in line with the eye of the service leader and the east window, the form and location refers to earlier studies of eclipses and perceptual experience. From a specific location on the Bima, the leader of the service has a unique understanding of the Ark and the east light. Participants of the service pull the Ark down with pulleys when it is time to remove or return the Torah.
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Like the pensive parts of a long run, drawing with lines is a meditative and fruitful component of the project. The physical engagment with the work allows for slow, thoughtful decision-making that only arrives when space is made for it.
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The geometric organization of the components embodies a reflective, albeit asymmetrical, relationship between the earth and the cosmos with the Sanctuary hovering between. Each piece is relational.
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Exploded Component Relationships
The shell is contructed from cast concrete, allowing for surface texture. The concrete materiality emphasizes how form and space are defined through densities of light.
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The between is shaped by tensile members hanging the ceiling from above and compressive members supporting the floor from below, structurally reflective and asymmetrical.
“When one uses the words beauty of holiness, one can call this kind of expressing the holy: “beauty of emptiness.” This emptiness is not an emptiness by privation, but it is an emptiness by inspiration. It is not an emptiness where we feel empty, but it is an emptiness where we feel that the empty space is filled with the presence of that which cannot be expressed in any finite form.” Paul Tillich
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“It becomes a living space that is one with the people inhabiting it. The actual walls cease to exist and the body of the beholder is aware only of the surrounding space.� Tadao Ando
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Conclusion The process and works shown here explore Architecture as a means of registration between the infinite and a finite, defined moment. The between is a phenomenological and geometric awareness, physically manifesting tangencies inherent in the human experience. The suspension required to inhabit a liminal space allows for new possibilities. The Jewish Sanctuary is an embodiment of chapters one and two in this journey, however it is not the only programmatic manifestation of between-ness and does not exclude possible chapters four, five, six…
“The mind is able to relax, but in poetic revery the soul keeps watch, with no tension, calmed and active. To compose a well-constructed poem, the mind is obliged to make projects that prefigure it.” Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.
While these words of Bachelard speak to my process of working on this thesis, they also describe how the psyche dwells in between-ness. Experience and understanding of one’s built environment aggregate over time such that this present moment results from a remembered past and an imagined future. Each finite moment therefore is new.
Within the infinite and a finite moment, within a past and a future, one pauses here to dwell in between-ness.
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In the liminality of the Sanctuary, within the substances of light, sound, and community, the momentary aggregation of time is slowed down and suspended. One adjusts, registers, locates, and creates a new understanding of relational and perceptual experience. The liminality of this architecture allows for a recalibration necessary to profound physical existence.
Dwelling in Between-ness Nicole Wiznitzer
RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN Bachelor of Fine Arts, 2013 Bachelor of Architecture, 2014 nicolefwiznitzer@gmail.com www.nicolewiznitzer.com
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