A Semester of Cemetery University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture Tony Martinico - Winter 2016 Sarah Black
Contents Head My previous mindset about design and its process, how to think about place and its importance, and coming into understanding how to think about things differently from thinking about thinking about things.
Body The body of works that ultimately were used as tools to enable me to learn new things through each iteration and how it moves me to think differently and correlate relationships.
Rump Concepts of different things during the semester being conceived within the concept of cemetery.
Premeditating on ideas that really stop the cycle Creativity is halted when we stir bias Attempted actualization of the thought which is already actualized is the blockage of most of the river without the destination, it never ends The dance that follows an improv song the unrehearsed tempo adapts with each progression thoughts are progressive Do, learn, learn again Think, relate, realize The steps to the dance The undirected steps Possibilities The numerous amount of steps they are limitless but all contribute to the dance
Layers + Forces Source of understanding ‘forces’ There are forces that impact the way layers affect each other. Forces can remove, add, and smudge. They are sometimes preconceived and understood. There are unplanned forces Unplanned forces help us understand things that we never intended. It shows the nature of things. It improves our ability to see things beyond what we intended to see. These forces that we have no control over are in our everyday lives. It is changing and unpredictable. It is our earthquakes and jazz music leading our dance.
Layers impact each other The layers, though hierarchical, are impacted by the patterns and layers that came before it. The position of the layers and how they are applied also make a difference. They create a stratification.
Blending + Bleeding Layers blending are new possibilities Every moment that colors in this process come to mix or blend, I have realized the potential that blending two things have. This is even more true when colors don’t completely lose their identity. Bleeding is unphased by everything but gravity Gravity is an invisible force. Invisible forces impact the potentials of our outcomes in our lives. These things can be considered invisible as they are not directly seen, but have impact. These things are politics, gravity, genetics, economics etc.
Multiple forces Different types of forces leave their mark in different ways, and when layers interact with each other in different ways through different forces, their outcomes are different. Every time we add a force to the equation, there are more potentials to become actualized.
Difference + Reveal Subtracting is revealing more Layers create this hierarchy, but with every addition and subtraction there is a becoming of something new. In this specific case more information was shown when a layer was removed Undefined borders The shape of this piece came about from a series of necessity. No thought was planned beforehand. This piece shows a difference from being transformed by the way the forces were responding to the piece. It created more interesting relationships between its form and the layers that form on top of it. A border is no longer a language that speaks as a restraint.
Chance Chance plays an important role in the relationships that are made. Chance creates form from negative space. Chance allows for potentials to become actualized without bias.
Virtualities + Actualization The virtual is in the making While creating eidetics, there are endless places that one may end up. The end is determined during the process of asking questions and studying relationships and where they proceed. These potential realities are what is called virtualities. The made: an actualization Actualizations are the products after we have completed the making. The loop that will filter into the next eidetic is the analyzation that occurs after it is made. Connections are made, relationships are seen, and a deeper understanding of creating comes to the surface. What is learned What is learned in the feedback loop are the discoveries made throughout the process, but also after. When looking at the images now I understand a sense that borders want to be created, but where we achieve more information is where the layers blur and create something entirely new and not of either of the participants that take place in that section.
Layers + Memory of Place Folding of Space This occurs when reenacting things in the past. Annual events, historical days, and retelling of stories are all ways that people fold space. The bringing of a time in the past to the present. Memory of Place Memories of a place are triggered from visiting a place, and cannot always be forced upon ourselves. Another interesting point that became clear to me was that any given place has a memory of itself longer than we do. The place is always there and always encountering itself. The place becomes inevitably a collection of the memories of the people who visit the place. Things are added, subtracted, moved, and changed. The place is never always the same. It is always in constant change. Landscape and Memory Landscape is an interesting thing. It is a place that relieves people from the stress of their lives and becomes a canvas for reflection. Memory is difficult to command to rememberance, but when given a landscape to open up the mind, people are capable of being in that place, while also being very much in a different place. This other place is a virtual memory pod that allows a type of dreamy memory to be re-encountered.
Immanence + the Druids Immanence... An understanding of continuance is invested in the term immanence. It is the “movement of the infinite,” and a “principle or virtual indetermination.” Immanence is therefore “potentiality without action.” Thinking about Death Death in the Abram traditions have an importance on the continuance of the soul, but a disinterest in the body. The body has an end. In other religions there is no end, that life is a web or network which all is dependent upon one another. The Druids, for example, believe that when someone dies they continue to move and create life within the ecosystem we cohabitate.
Cemetery Originally the cemetery was centered in the middle of town. The church was really the heart of cities. Now people have pushed cemeteries out. Death is an end, something we want out of our every day thoughts. An immanent cemetery would not be like traditional thoughts today. It would be constantly changing and the potentials would all be there. It would be organic and unplanned, a place to become a canvas.
Structure + Connections Structure of conversation In these diagrams I was studying the relationship of intensities between questions and answers. How they cancel each other and how they create something new and lead into another series of more questions and answers
Its networking Networks can be understood as distinct elements that have a system of linking. They have nodes, points of importance, that are separated from each other, but further relate and connect.
How to better understand it These clusters that I have created from formulating in my mind the structure of transferring information. I can see further becoming nodes and points of information, and that they can be exchanged between other similar nodes. I recognized this when I started to realize that no one person or thing is directly the answer or question, but that a series of them are in all of us and we connect to each other to have better way of understanding.
Splob + Splurbing Abslorbing Passive people in a seminar are still gathering information from a conversation. They are collecting thoughts and connecting it with their own, but it doesn’t reach the potential of connections with other people in the conversation Splurbing This is the exchange of information that comes from splobs. Connections are made through an exchange of information and a ripple affect occurs to further expand and radiate to others who may pick up on the information that is connecting, relating, and causing things to occur. It is constantly moving and waving as the conversation is happening.
Splob Splobs encapsulate immanence as a series of questions and answers. A series of information swirls inside these splobs. The immanence is also present in abslorbers, but a sblurber makes the potentials within actualized and capable for other splobs to connect and actualize their potentials to create more possibilities.
Anti-Networks Veins and their formation Created by forces, now the path of chance has the idea of anti-network while it does not connect places of information. They create form by chance, and new things are discovered with each iteration and it is uncontrollable. Webs are space and form While these webs do create a series of holes that we could formulate as spaces, they also create a structure, though brittle, of connection to other spans of the webbed area or region. It is difficult to really consider a web space or form as it contains mostly of a singular face. It creates a structure that holds itself together. Holes are where forces exceed their limit The possibilities that forces have on a substance ends when theres a hole, but then what does a hole do when creating form or space? It becomes a pocket to communicate between spaces, and reveal another type of space. Enclosed, revealed, or open beyond our understanding we all live in spaces. The potentials of space are limitless, but we often limit ourselves by common procedure instead of thinking of these relationships.
Inverting Space Inversion of spaces Taking space and making it form creates a new way of seeing the space. Things become the opposite of how we originally saw them and it becomes clearer the relationships the spaces had when they were spaces Looking in a new way This new way of seeing enables other spaces to be created by the original form that existed. What appears to be less successful about these for me is the lack of diversity that it shows in comparison to its original state. Textures become more prevalent and space takes form, but the negative of them was more powerful as a whole.
Seeing relationships The new relationships that are conducted in this research is one between spaces. When the naked eye cannot see two sides of a solid, this successfully demonstrates some of those occurrences. The wrapping around spaces become easier to read in form than when they were spaces. This is the success of this exercise.
Experimental Aftermath Making connections When looking at these forms, the intriguing part of them was how they were transformed and the spaces they created. Each piece started the same, but none of them ended the same. Correlation between hole and path Holes that were talked about previously are taken to a new level in this experiment. I noticed that paths and types of circulation can be made when connecting the holes. The holes are openings within a solid and connect multitudes of spaces. Section of understanding To further study the spaces and their correlation, I cut into these forms. I created a section that I later created a sectional diagram. Putting the form back together creates a voided space from the cut that also becomes another point of study.
Where from here? The feedback is deeper understanding With each experiment, eidetic, diagram analyzation and reflection afterwards allows for a new direction to be implemented. More understanding comes from doing and learning. Just keep moving It was frustrating feeling confused and as if I was failing and not understanding. It was reassuring to have conversations with people to clear and remind myself that is important to learn and continue to move. Learning is not measured by successes or failures. It is also important to not control where you are going, and understanding that learning is not linear. I do not think anything we do in architecture should be linear either. It should be rethought in order to get better. The made impacts Everything I have done left an impression on me and how I thought. I made connections to other things outside of what I was doing and thinking. This process has allowed me to think about things in other ways other than the standard, and these thoughts have been accessible but by doing those thoughts become visible and capable of seeing and saying.
This process, while I believe is not over, has changed the way that I look at many things, but also the way I think about Cemetary. I think the most that I took away from this class was to not have preconceptions of things, and to think about them as we go through the process of design. The implimentation of doing something over and over helps improvement and understanding. Changing the way one thinks and continuing to move and grow is important. Once one style is in existence, another needs to change things up. The dance is not over yet, and I’m still listening to the improv moving as it plays.