ZOE MA LEC K I MA ŁEC K I ma’ wetski A
ZOE MALECKI PORTFOLIO
FALL 2017 - SUMMER 2020
The oscillation between working in digital and physical technologies is a fundamental element of my workflow. Despite my love for technology and its importance as a medium in architecturenot to mention the relative ease of sending a file to a 3D printer-the materiality of building models by hand has led to discoveries of textures, colors and shapes that influence the underlying ideas behind the project as a whole. Whether it is using manila folders and mixing a paint that mirrors that iconic beige texture; paint on foam, giving it a craggly stone texture; or the stacked contours of a model evoking fluting from a column. The tactile elements-textures, colors, postures-at the early stages of my work carry through to the end. It is what emphasizes the curvature on a duplex and it is what takes a library and turns it into a post-modern exploration of the phenomenology of space.
ZOE MALECKI
CONTENTS
6 THESIS: Tremulous Advisor: Andrew Zago Summer 2020
28 3GB Vertical Studio II
Andrew Zago, AT: Benjamin Weisgall Spring 2020
42 3GB Visual Studies: Draw the Line X Devyn Weiser & Curime Batliner Spring 2020
50 3GA Vertical Studio I
Andrew Zago, AT: Benjamin Weisgall Fall 2019
64 3GA Visual Studies: A Post Conceptual Position Anna Neimark Fall 2019
72 2GB Design Studio IV Darin Johnstone Spring 2019
86 2GB Visual Studies: Glow
Elena Manferdini & AT: Andrea Cadioli Spring 2019
92 2GA Design Studio III Russell Thomsen Fall 2018
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1GA Design Studio I
2GA History of Architecture & Urbanism II
Anna Neimark Fall 2017
Marrikka Trotter, TF: Liz Hirsch Fall 2018
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1GA Visual Studies I
1GB History of Architecture & Urbanism I
Matthew Au & Alfie Koetter Fall 2017
Jia Gu, AT: Liz Hirsch Spring 2018
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3GB Paralax
1GA Into to Contemporary Architecture History
John Cooper Spring 2020
Erik Gehnoiu Fall 2017
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2GA Visual Studies III
3GA The Other Shape: Architecture After Image
3GA Advanced Project Delivery
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1GB Design Studio II
2GB Ruin
2GB Design Development
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1GB Visual Studies II
2GB History of Architecture & Urbanism III
1GA Materials & Tectonics
David Eskenazi & Devyn Weiser Fall 2017
Margaret Griffin Spring 2018
Matthew Au & Anna Neimark Spring 2018
Marrikka Trotter Fall 2019
Russell Thomsen Spring 2019
Erik Gehnoiu, TF: Henry Yang Spring 2019
Pavel Getov & Kerenza Harris, AT: Vanessa De La Hoz Fall 2019
Herwig Baumgartner & Scott Uriu Spring 2019
Pavel Getov Fall 2017
THESIS
THESIS:
Tremulous Advisor: Andrew Zago, Summer 2020 Drive along the ten-east freeway in the mid- to late afternoon— when the sun is behind you, in line with the agglomeration of towers on the Downtown Los Angeles skyline—and you will see a building shimmering on the horizon. My thesis comes out of an observation in the architectural discipline where there is a discrepancy between the solid object of a building and the atmospheric effect produced by the surface that clads it. They may blur, tremble and dissolve from far away but upon approach, dazzle with the intricate level of detail that make up the facade— an effect akin to Johnathan Crary’s use of the word “shimmering” when describing Seurat’s paintings. On the other side of the freeway, The Los Angeles Metropolitan Courthouse sits mirrored, like two buildings in dialogue with each other. Through a renovation, which doubles the height of the existing structure and alters the circulation, the roof of the courthouse becomes a garden oasis for court-goers, people in the community, and birds. With the increased visibility, the tremulous effect becomes an urban feature in the city—how the building is perceived changes when viewed from the freeway, from the street and, from within. Thus a generic grey pigeon transforms into an heirloom creature. --Zoe Malecki Thesis Statement, presented on September 12, 2020
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My project is a renovation of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Courthouse, which is slated for a “critical need” level renovation. Due to budget reallocations because of COVID, the project has been halted, allowing me the opportunity to rethink the scope of the renovation. The courthouse sits across the 10 freeway from William Pereira’s USC Tower, whose shimmering quality (see pages 158 and 162) inspired my investigation of buildings where there is a discrepancy between the objectness of a building and the atmospheric quality of the surface that clads it. The 8
courthouse serves people with traffic violations, mental health related cases, and misdemeaners. This courthouse is where everyday people go. With limited space inside, people are forced to wait outside in the sun in a line that wraps around the building to pay their parking tickets. By placing a hat on top of the courthouse, I have created a garden oasis and aviary for courtgoers to wait, a green space in a part of Los Angeles devoid of parks, and an urban feature in the city.
THESIS
William Pereira USC Tower 1965
LA Metropolitan Courthouse William Allen 1972
PREVIOUS SPREAD: Massing model where the hat is made out of a translucent film to illustrate the lightweight and airy quality of the garden. LEFT: 1974 photograph of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Courthouse, designed by William Allen, taken two years after it was built. ABOVE: Diagram showing the relationship of USC Tower (orignally called Occidental Tower) to the Courthouse. The two buildings are in dialogue with each other across the freeway. 9
ZOE MALECKI LEFT: Photocollages of the building as seen from the 10-East Freeway. How the building is perceived changes as it is viewed from the freeway, the street and from the inside. RIGHT: Photocollage of the building as seen from the street.
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ABOVE: The building’s tremulous effect is created by tetrahedrons that are aranged so as the viewer’s vantage point changes the facade appears more opaque. Additionally each flap is riangular flap is mechanized so when it flips up it shows its white underside. 13
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THESIS LEFT: (From top to bottom) plan of the ground floor of the courthouse, where most of the existing floor has been removed to expose the feet; plan of the rooftop garden, where visitors exit the elevator; plan of the garden space itself. RIGHT: Section of the rooftop garden perched on top of the existing courthouse.
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THESIS
LEFT: Rendering of the interior of the garden as seen from the elevator. ABOVE: Rick Barker’s fancy Voorburger Shield Cropper Pigeon, which serves as a humorous mascot for the project—this bird looks like a small pigeon has been place ontop of another one, much like the garden placed on top of the courthouse. 17
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ABOVE: Rendering of the interior of the garden, looking back at the ramp from the elevator. The garden is 260,000 square feet. RIGHT: Rendering of the interior of the garden showeing the edge of the water feature, where people can sit and birds can bathe. 18
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THESIS LEFT: Stills from a digital animation that show autonomous nature of the facade, which changes as the viewer drives around the building. NEXT SPREAD: Rendering of the building as seen from a bird’s eye view.
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ZOE MALECKI LEFT: Small study models that show how the flaps attach to the structural systme of the big model. RIGHT: Big facade model mounted in my dining room in order to film a stop-motion animation and to serve as the background for the thesis presentation. NEXT SPREAD: Still from a stop-motion animation made with the big facade model that illustrates how the flaps will shimmer mechanically—much like a solari board, or split flap board.
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DESIGN STUDIO IV
VERTICAL STUDIO II: Phi Bonsecours
Andrew Zago, AT: Benjamin Weisgall, Spring 2020 This studio presents an opportunity to work with Phi, a major emerging arts organization in Montreal, Canada in their development of a new arts center. By their own descrption: “the Phi ecosystem is now made up of the Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Phi Center, Studio Phi as well as numerous partnerships with local and international cultural institutuions. Phi imagines, produces, disseminates and offers world-class artistic experiences in several disciplines, including contemporary art, music, cinema, digital arts and new media.” In order to exapnd thier operations and public presence, Phi has acquired a significant group of buildings and open spce in the center of Old Montreal which—with buildings dating to the 17th centruy—is one of the oldest urban areas in North America. In the near future, they will be undertaking a major architectural intervention of this site. In preparation for that, and by way of expanding their range of imagined possibilities, Phi is inviting several architecture schools in Canada and internationally to conduct design studios on this topic. This is one of the studios. Phi Bonsecours is a project in formation. While the studio will produce concrete building proposals, there is first a need to define the institutional and urban vision of the project. --Phi Bonsecours Vertical Studio Description
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The project began with in-depth research on the city of Montreal and the Phi organization. This variation of the Nolli map illustrates the continuous urban wall of Old Montreal, with stone facades spanning the whole street. The Phi Bonsecour project is not just about reconciling an old and new building, but is also about restoring the continuity that has been disrupted by modern renovations and demolition in favor of parking lots. By looking at the Nolli map we began examining the relationship of white space to infill—or public space to private space. As a studio we have asked ourselves, what it means for a private institution to create public space and how to activate that space so that it actually gets used. 30
VERTICAL STUDIO II
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Model constructed out of seperate materials to indicate the existing historic buildings (right) and the new addition (left). ABOVE: Nolli-inspired plan of part of old Montreal with Phi’s three buildings indicated. 1.) Phi Foundation 2.) Phi Center and 3.) The future location of Phi Bonsecours and our site. 31
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In tandem with the research of the city, each student sought to develop an experimental facade that creates an atmospheric effect to juxtapose and complement the stone facades. Inspired by the ice palaces built during Montreal winters in the early 1900’s, my two early models each explored a different quality of the ice palace. The first utilizes the stacking of massive ice blocks and the second utilizes the shiny, translucsent, shaddowy effect of ice that repeatedly melts and refreezes. By layering dark, matte acrylic with copper foil, I have produced a shimmering effect that shifts as the viewers position to the object changes. The interior of the building has multiple sectional objects, called squircles, a portmanteu and a technical description for geometry that is between a square and a circle. 32
VERTICAL STUDIO II LEFT: Photomontage of the new facade juxtaposed against the stone of Old Montreal. From far away it looks like a solid dark material (as seen above) and as one approaches the underlying quality emerges (as in the model to the right). RIGHT: Two early study models. The top is composed of a series of blocks, made of different materials, which represents the programming and sectional strategies. The bottom is made of layered materials, which represents the facade strategy.
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ABOVE: Four sections that show squircles nestled in between rectilinear program blocks creating a material other in section. The squircles house the theatre and numerous black box spaces that can be used for exhibition or performance. RIGHT: Diagrams showing the old building (white) and new building (black), and the placement of squircles throughout, respectively. 34
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ZOE MALECKI RIGHT Roof and ground floor plans, respectively. With the exception of the entrance for the artist residency program, the whole of the ground floor has been given over to public space. All visitors enter from an existing entrance in an historic building, allowing the new building to have a continuous, uninterupted facade. Squircles are nestled in between rectilinear program blocks, requiring visitors to circumabulate the space.
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ABOVE: Photomontage of the new facade in a photograph of the site from 1860. RIGHT: Interior rendering of the squircle that contains the theatre hovering over the lobby. NEXT SPREAD: Photograph of the three models which make up the material quality of the project. (Left to right) shimmering material for the facade, courtyard and the exterior of the existing stone structure that interfaces with the new building; matte and smooth material of the squircle; felted wool material for the carperts, upholstery, and lines the interior of the squircles. 38
VERTICAL STUDIO II
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DESIGN STUDIO IV
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VISUAL STUDIES III
VISUAL STUDIES: Draw the Line X
Devyn Weiser & Curime Batliner, Spring 2020 Group Project with: Jessie Helgesen & Sam Kaufman This Visual Studies elective explores playful modes of drawing at the convergence of digitality and analogicity. Linked to postdigital visual culture, projects exploit the tension between abstraction and figuration, identification and deception, materiality and immateriality. During the first half of the semester, designers work hands-on in Robot House layering up techniques through a series of structured exercises. Line, multi-line and outline drawings are produced using Montana markers attached to robots with custom end-arm tools. To create graphic effects, marker nips/tips range from extra fine 0.7mm to extra wide 50mm multi-line. In the second half of the semester, markers are swapped for extruders, custom profiles, and polymer clay. For both projects ‘Line Work’ and ‘Domestic Extruder’ unplanned and unexpected results happen by adjusting the robot’s registration, direction, speed, pressure, etc. --Draw the Line X Visual Studies Syllabus
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Grasshopper pre-visulization path of a series of E’s—the letter our group chose to focus on. ABOVE: Scans of Staubli Robot drawings of the letter E in two compositions. RIGHT: Two Staubli Robot drawings layered, offset and scanned. The orthogonal E was altered to exhbit a simulated “misbehavior,” producing a repeatable, agitated curve. 44
VISUAL STUDIES DRAW THE LINE X
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VISUAL STUDIES DRAW THE LINE X LEFT: Midterm exhibition of large 19x25” drawings, portfolio of 11x14” drawings, and a “cookbook” that details drawing recipes. RIGHT: Detail of drawing in partial sunlight, allowing the viewer to see the layers of straight E’s drawn in pastel flourescent pink ink and curvy E’s drawn in gloss varnish mixed with pastel flourescent pink.
This class examines the experimentation and chance occurances that can happen, despite utilizing a tool that precisely executes repetitive tasks—Staubli Robots. Although we programed the robot to execute a set path, most of the compostional decisions were made through on the spot interactions with the robot. By choosing one letter and simple scalable compositions, we focused on experimenting with a limited set of variables,
including layering, diluting inks with gloss varnish, pressure of the marker on the substrate, speed of robot, and solvent. We mixed three custom colors: pastel flourescent pink, band-aid beige, and oatmeal brown, which in keeping with the class theme of a cookbook, we dubbed the collective color palate as “Neapolitan ice cream.”
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For the second half of the semester, each groupmember chose one of three different mediums—Model Magic air dry compound; clay casting slip; and gelatin and pigment. Although working seperately and with different materials, we maintained a cohesiveness throughout the project by continuing to work in the form of the letter “E” and the same color palette. 48
VISUAL STUDIES DRAW THE LINE X LEFT: Model Magic extruded through a 3Dprinted rosette tip, like what’s used in cake decorating. This material resembles icing. RIGHT: (Top) A series of E’s, similar to one of the drawing paths used in the first part of the semester and a squiggly E, similar to the “misbehavior” produced by the robot, respectively. (Middle) Casting slip dripped and poured on foam E’s (Bottom) Gelatin injected with pigment and tinted gelatin shaped into an E, respectively.
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DESIGN STUDIO IV
VERTICAL STUDIO I: Difficult Pyramids
Andrew Zago, AT: Benjamin Weisgall, Fall 2019 The studio will create alternative proposals for the planned David M. Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago. The current design is by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Of the project, the university writes: “The building, which will be a center of intellectual exchange, scholarly collaboration and special events, will provide the University with much needed meeting spaces for workshops, symposia and lectures, among other activities.” The 90,000 square foot building is sited prominently on the Midway Plaisance diagonally across from Bertram Goodhue’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and two blocks from Todd Williams and Billy Tsien’s Logan Center for the Arts. The studio will visit Chicago. Beyond a site visit, we will study the project in relation to the city’s architecture and urbanism. --Difficult Pyramids Vertical Studio Description
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The studio began with two simultaneous precedent studies at two very different scales—powdered pigment used to make pastels and Pennsylvania Coal Breakers, which populated the landscape from the late 19th and early 20th centuries during an anthracite boom. The crux of the studio was an exploration of difficult pyramids, where pieces are stacked horizontally instead of vertically. During a presentation we gave at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Bob Somol noted how the Coal Breaker form was as much a sphinx as a pyramid. I took a departure from the coal breaker by incorporating the pigment models, sphinx and the work of artist, Imi Knoebel to derive the form. 52
ABOVE: (In order) Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre and Ultramarine Blue pigments, formed with a binder to make pastels in the shapes and proportions of the discrete pieces that make up the final design. RIGHT: Plywood model of the Sloan Coal Breaker in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The surface texture was achieved through a misuse of traditional wood block printing techniques.
VERTICAL STUDIO
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ZOE MALECKI RIGHT: Diagrams of the project, showing the transition from the sillouhuette of the Coal Breaker to a reduced version inspired by the work of painter and sculptor, Imi Knoebel. BELOW: Elevations of the project as seen from the two main facades—from the Midway and Woodlawn Avenue, respectively. Instead of looking to the Coal Breaker for a fenestration strategy, I drew inspiration from loom punch cards, which combines abstration with a grid logic.
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LEFT: Shown here are 5 out of 15 plans drawn for the conference center, which included two basements floors and four tower floors.The program required a small (Level 3) and large (Level 5) multipurpose room, two small (Level 8) and one large (Level 6) auditoriums, ten meeting rooms (Level 8) and a restaurant (Level 1). Larger program blocks cross over two or three discrete pieces, while smaller blocks are relegated to one piece. 57
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ABOVE: Cross section, cutting through the large auditorium, one of the small auditoriums, and both mulitpurpose rooms. This sections highlights how the program spans more than one discrete piece of the massing. RIGHT: Four longitudinal sections that cut through subsequent discrete pieces. Highlights the sloped floors, ramps and stairs that make up the internal meandering circulation. 58
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ABOVE: Photograph of the final model as would be seen from the midway. OPPOSITE: Photograph of the final model, highlighting that the white and brown pieces are suspended above the ground. NEXT SPREAD: Model shown in its open configuration with protruding acrylic boxes (and corresponding negative space) to show how program moves across the discrete pieces. 60
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DESIGN STUDIO IV
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VISUAL STUDIES II
VISUAL STUDIES:
A Post Conceptual Position Anna Neimark, Fall 2019 Group Project with: Mateus Comparato, Wendy Guerrero, and Vincent Yung Eisenman’s erasure in the redacted essay, titled “Notes on Conceptual Architecture: Towards a Definition” took the specific information out of the format of the page and rendered it nearly blank—the annotated empty page was as close as architecture ever got to pure concept. Nearly fifty years later, I see this seminar’s work as an answer to Eisenman’s prompt. But rather than making more blank pages, in a post-conceptual way, the exercises in this class will attempt to fill out blank forms with specific content. This task may be compared to the work done by a coroner who fills in the details of the cause of someone’s death within the neat guides of a fillable death certificate. Students will work collaboratively on a series of exercises that bring our attention to the particularities of fillable forms in the context of architecture: through language, craft, and material specificities.
--A Post Conceptual Position Visual Studies Syllabus
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ZOE MALECKI PREVIOUS SPREAD: Rendering of the original blue found object door. RIGHT: Drawing titled, “Erased Zago Architecture,” where the architecture and the all personal information has been redacted. This assignment was worked on in pairs with teammate Wendy Guerrero.
This semester was broken into two assignemnets. First, looking at Peter Eisenmen’s essay where the text was redacted, leaving just the footnotes, we erased architecture from a construction drawing set. The image was accompanied by correspondence documents with the architecture firm that provided the drawing, where all personal infromation was redacted in white insted of the traditional black. The drawing was redacted in white as well. By erasing the architecture, we are forced to reinterpret the design through legally required measurements and notations. 66
VISUAL STUDIES A POST CONCEPTUAL POSTION
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VISUAL STUDIES A POST CONCEPTUAL POSTION Bedroom One Closet Door Blue side. Twenty-four and one-sixteenths inches from hanging style to meeting style. Seventy-eight and thirteen-sixteenths inches from top rail to bottom rail. One and nine-sixteenths of an inch thick solid wood at the top; one and a half inch thick solid wood at the bottom. Top rail: three and a half inches wide. Cross rail, cross rail, lock rail, cross rail: all four inches wide. Bottom rail: eight and one-sixteenths inches wide. Hanging style: four and one-sixteenths inches wide. Meeting style: four inches at the widest point. Five panels framed with moulding, all inset four and one-sixteenths inches from the left jamb. Inset varying measurements from the right jamb: four inches, three and fifteen-sixteenths inches, three and seven-eighths inches, three and seven-eighths inches, three and thirteen-sixteenths inches. Including the moulding, each panel measures sixteen inches by ten and a quarter inches. Excluding the moulding, each panel measures twelve and a half inches by six and three-quarters inches. Four grooves: a quarter inch, a quarter inch, one and three-sixteenths of an inch, one-sixteenth of an inch. There is a notch in the bottom of the door, which slopes upward from the bottom left for seventeen and three-quarter inches. At the apex, it slopes back down to the bottom right for six and one-eighths inches. Brass hinges. One: three and nine-sixteenths inches long, six and a half inches from the top. Two: three and a half inches long, eight and one-sixteenth inches from the bottom. Distance between hinges: fifty-seven and three-sixteenths inches. A five knuckle barrel, where each barrel measures eleven-sixteenths of an inch long. Decorative ball and Bishop’s hat finial tips on the top and bottom ends of the pins, respectively. Two leaves, each one and a half inches wide by three and a half inches long. Three holes on each leaf, a quarter inch in diameter. From the edge of the leaf, the holes measure: three-quarters of an inch, a quarter of an inch, three-quarters of an inch. Brass door knob. Rotated five degrees counter-clockwise. Metal plate: two and one-sixteenth inches by five and three-eighths inches. Knob diameter: one and thirteen-sixteenths of an inch. Rose diameter: three-quarters of an inch at the center of the knob. Keyhole: a quarter of an inch by nine-sixteenths of an inch. Four holes: one-eighth of an inch diameter, located three-sixteenths of an inch from the left and right edges, a quarter of an inch from the top and bottom edges. Five layers of paint. Five-one hundred and twenty-eighths of an inch thick. French blue, beige, off white, green and pink.
Bedroom One Closet Door Nude door. Stripped of paint, the door is slimmer. Twenty-four inches from hanging style to meeting style. Seventy-eight and three-quarters inches from top rail to bottom rail. One and five-eighths of an inch thick solid wood at the top; one and a half inch thick solid wood at the bottom. Dimensions of the top rail, cross rail, cross rail, lock rail, cross rail, and bottom rail are the same. Hanging style: now four inches wide. Meeting style: still four inches at the widest point. Beneath the paint lay vertical grain douglas fir. The wood has been cut perpendicular to the tree’s growth rings so they run vertically up and down each face. The horizontal orientation of the rails has the wood grain running perpendicular to the styles. Six horizontal rails are sandwiched in-between the vertical hanging style and meeting style, framing five panels. The rails and styles are fastened with tongue and groove joinery. The rails and styles form a rectangular moulding around each panel, decorated with an ovolo sticking profile, which is mitered at the corners. A crack runs along the grain halfway down the second panel from the top. The crack is visible from both sides. The door is blemished with small holes, which appear to be patched with a white filler. There is a notch in the bottom of the door, which slopes upward from the bottom left for seventeen inches. At the apex, it slopes back down to the bottom right for six inches.
LEFT: Measured drawing of the original Blue Door. RIGHT: Two poems inspired by Craig Dworkin’s “Fact,” about the original Blue Door and the subsequently striped Nude Door, respectively. The format is mirrored so that the differences and similarities between the two doors are recognizable.
Steel hinges. Corroded. One: three and five-eighths inches long, six and a half inches from the top. Two: length and distance from the bottom are the same. Distance between hinges: fifty-seven and one-eighths inches. A five knuckle barrel, where each barrel measures three-quarters of an inch long. Decorative ball finial tips on both ends of the pins. The dimensions of each leaf is the same. The number of holes and their diameter on each leaf is the same. From the edge of the leaf, the distance of the holes are the same. Steel door knob. Treated to look like brass. Metal plate: dimensions are the same. Knob diameter: one and three-quarters of an inch. Rose diameter: is the same. Keyhole: a quarter of an inch by a half of an inch. Four holes: one-eighth of an inch diameter, located three-sixteenths of an inch from the left and right edges, a quarter of an inch from the top and bottom edges. No paint. Stripped bare. Just natural wood.
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In the second assignment, inspiration was taken from Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Kosuth. A ready-made door was found, measured and documented. The door was restored to its perfect state. To us that meant striping it of all its paint, returning it to its natural, nude state. The door was displayed at a final exhibition, along with all of its iterations—drawings, text, renderings, photographs, and a packet documenting the process. This assignment served as a continuation of some of the concepts from the redacted drawing exercise, like how do we understand an object when the information is presented just as text or just as a drawing. 70
VISUAL STUDIES A POST CONCEPTUAL POSTION
LEFT: Found object Blue Door, photographed in its original state. CENTER: Same door, re-photographed after all the paint has been striped and the metal has been polished. RIGHT: Performace of fellow student, Wesley Evans, reading the Blue Door poem while standing next to the Nude Door at the final exhibition. The door, which was mounted to the wall, was operable in ninety-degrees. 71
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DESIGN STUDIO IV
DESIGN STUDIO IV: Vertical University
Darin Johnstone, Spring 2019 This studio examines the relationship between architecture and the city, deepening students’ understanding of the ways in which architecture can both inform and be informed by the city into which it intervenes. Through both and in-depth study of relevant examples and site research, models of formal, infrastructural, and ecological approaches to architecture’s interface with cities are considered and applied. Tasked with developing proposals for a large university project located in Mexico city, students are encouraged to design into existing urban conditions with an understanding of the dynamic and interdependent forces of economics, planning, ecology, politics, and infrastructure that have shaped the contemporary city. --2GB Design Studio Syllabus
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This project began with a precedent study of the facade of the Conjunto Urbano Presedente Alemán residential complex by Mario Pani in Mexico City and the plan of Duke University’s Gothic campus by Julian Abele. Each student had a different combination of precedents. Inspired by Agnes Martin, I represented the facade not as blocks of color but as a series of thin lines that look like solid masses of color when viewed from a distance. These precedents when overlayed on mylar and flipped up produce the section of the building—thereby creating a vertical university. 74
PREVIOUS SPREAD: Photograph of the final 1:500 massing model. ABOVE: Precedent study of the CUPA facade and Duke University Campus Plan, respectively. RIGHT: Overlay of the facade ontop of the campus plan. This became the basis for the section of the vertical university.
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ABOVE: Plan of the 5th floor library that looks down into the plaza at the ground floor and two lightwells created in one of the original campus figures. RIGHT: Ground floor plan of the building on its triangular site in Mexico City. In order to incorporate all of the required program and outdoor spaces, I treated the massing as two slabs that open up like a book. The ground plane of the site serves as an extention of the circular plaza, where there is a subway station. The open plaza of the site creates engagement between the city and the campus by pulling people in from the circle plaza and the streets to two grand lobbies. 76
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ABOVE: Plan of the 22nd floor where there is the cafeteria. LEFT: Plan of the 14th floor. It is at the middle height of the building where the void between the two halves of the book fills in, creating a doughnut that spans several floors. There is a large outdoor plaza and indoor running track. 77
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LEFT: A combined section that opens up like a book, mimicking the massing strategy. The program is organized with public spaces (auditorium and library) at the bottom and private spaces at the top (gym, caffeteria and housing). The figures from the original campus plan create opportunities for large expanses of fenestration. 79
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DESIGN STUDIO IV BELOW: Two flat elevations overlayed on top of light renderings to give tonality. I pared down the figures from the campus plan. Leaving one to punch through at the center and the other two to each push into one slab, creating additional outdoor spaces and opportunities for light.
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ZOE MALECKI BELOW: Detail of final 1:150 model. The CNC mill path produced a wavy texture on the foam— a last minute discovery that I would love to continue to explore. RIGHT: Final 1:150 model, where the facade pattern is carved into the material instead of applied. NEXT SPREAD: 1:500 model photographed in the site model.
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VISUAL STUDIES: Glow
Elena Manferdini, AT: Andrea Cadioli, Spring 2019 This spring seminar will look closely at the changing relationship between “interesting” and “attention span” in architecture; style, identity, originality and remarkableness (anything that can be understood as excellence or unmistakably connotative brand) will not be the primary ingredient of this design recipe. On the contrary the class will master various optical effects able to transform a non-interesting object into an interesting one, through various modes of digital and physical lighting condition. The first part of the seminar will be a survey engineered to help students understand the potential of optical effects in a digital and physical environment and become familiar with color interactions, printing techniques and personal devices capabilities as AR. During the second part of the class, students will experiment with UV printing in order to produce mute building facades that come alive under various lighting conditions. The class as a whole will expand the notion of close-attention versus close-reading (distinction often used by Jeff Kipnis). The seminar will engage in a conversation on the ambiguous power of contemporary materials seen through personal devices and their unparalleled ability to produce new forms of imagination. --Glow Visual Studies Syllabus
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In this class we followed a series of perscriptive steps that built on one another to generate the layers of the final UV image. A collaged photograph served as the basis for generating a vector image using Grasshopper—this is the black and white layer. A Josef Albers print was recreated with Java, altered and arrayed to create the colored vector line work. In order for the colors to print vibrantly with the UV ink, the colors underwent additional alterations. The perception of the facade changes depending on the step of the process and the mode of representation. What we started with is transformed to create a completely new facade strategy that is activated with light. 88
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Collaged photograph of a “non-interesting” building, used as the basis of facade development. LEFT: Grasshopper scripted facade generated from the first collaged photograph. CENTER: Vector file for the UV print, created using a Java scripted pattern derived from a Josef Albers print. RIGHT: Final print as seen under a UV light. 89
ZOE MALECKI BELOW: Still frame from a Java animation of Josef Albers Interaction of Color plate VII-5, first shown in its original form, then affected to illustrate that the two diagonal lines are actually different colors even though their original background makes them appear to be the same color. OPPOSITE: Still frame from a Java animation of the same Albers plate arrayed accross the frame. Movements of the mouse in the x and y direction altered the HSB values for each square differently depending on its xy coordinate.
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DESIGN STUDIO III: Playing Against Type Russell Thomsen, Fall 2018 Group Project with: Ely Rabin The third semester M.Arch I core design studio will critically consider the idea of ‘type’ and ‘model’ in context of a renewed interest in objecthood—a discourse that posits typological thinking as a problem of collections and catalogues rather that periodization or classification. While no longer concerned with the origin of architecture, or imitation of nature, or taxonomy of types, this trans-temporal and non-thistic attitude articulates new ways of engaging the rapidly expanding archive of objects availiable to the designer. The vitality of this way of thinking and working is evident in contemporary art and fashion. Similarily, in architecture a focus on the multiple-object building complex leads to a reassessment of works by Gehry, Rossi, Siza, and Stirling at the cusp of the digital turn. Gaining familiarity with these set pieces shifts the initial focus of design activity in the studio to critically engage disciplinary knowledge. Through a (non)compositional approach, architectural projects will develop new coherences among parts that are neither dialectical nor differential. While retaining a level of disciplinary specificity and legibility, this contingent model playfully harnesses the discrepancy between digital and physical design processes. --2GA Design Studio Syllabus 93
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Since we were initially working with a composition of discrete, larger volumes, we considered Aldo Rossi’s proposal for the government buildings in Scandicci as a formative type. That project, like ours, is composed of a series of larger volumes connected by a straight line of circulation, playing against the more conventional enfilade typology. In our project, the linear circulation volume The site we are working with is located on is expressed as a large stair, engaging both the plan the northern edge of the campus. It suggests a long, and the section of the building as it moves upward narrow building with primary circulation along its along the length of the project. Beginning in a large, length, similar to that found in the enfilade structure multi-story lobby and ground floor cafe to the east, of a museum. the stair-corridor literally passes through the sound The studio brief asked us to investigate two primary questions: how does architecture come from architecture, and what is a contemporary role for typology in design? In an effort to continue the conversation that has been established today, our work began with new combinations of found architectural volumes assembled with and idea to play against type.
DESIGN STUDIO III PREVIOUS: Photograph of final sectional model. BELOW: Elevation of the building as seen from the inside of the campus. The massing is made up of precedent pieces from Frank Gehry’s MIT Stata Center, Winton Guest House, and Vitra Design Museum.
stages and offices, offering glimpses into each. It culminates at the western end of the building in the lobby of the auditorium at the top floor, affording views of the surrounding campus environment and distant hills. The building is made up of a structural steel frame, clad in metal panels. Fenestration is expressed as simple openings, puncturing the mass so as to maintain the legibility of the original, primary volumes. The panel sizes are consistent throughout but their orientation changes as they wrap the volumes, calling attention to the juxtapositions between the
volumes. We have maintained the simple building type defined by a single, linear volume of circulation. But like Rossi, we have recomposed the whole by assembling a series of more discrete parts skewered by that volume, now expressed in both plan and section. The result challenges the conventions of the type, offering a substantial variation on the original.
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LEFT: Roof plan showing the different sites that each team received within the campus. The long, narrow shape of the site and its location on the northern edge of the campus suggest a bar typology. RIGHT: Diagrams showing the strategies we used from the enphilade (top) and Aldo Rossi’s unbuilt Scandicci building (middle) and the enphilade. This project utilizes a long continuous stair to connect the discrete pieces that make up the form (bottom). 97
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RIGHT: Auditorium and ground floor plans, respectively. 98
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ABOVE: The long section of the building cuts through the length of the continuous stair. Like the enfilade in a museum, it passes through the visitor’s entrance, peers into the sound stage, travels through offices, and ends at a large window in the auditorium lobby that looks out at the mountains. RIGHT: The short section cuts through the grand atrium, office spaces and the auditorium. It also emphasizes the outdoor plaza created by the cantilever. 100
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OPPOSITE: The rear of the building as seen from outside of campus, showing the gap between two of the discrete pieces. ABOVE: Detail of the large continuous stair that is jutting into space to emphasize how it traverses the whole building. NEXT SPREAD: Section model, turned to show one of the two grand atria, auditorium and offices. The other side of the model is cut to show the sound stage and more offices. 102
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VISUAL STUDIES III: Multiples
David Eskenazi & Devyn Weiser, Fall 2018 Group Project with: Ely Rabin This course provides an introduction to advanced techniques in modeling and fabrication processes by focusing on digital drawing and production tools that enable the representation of complex and dynamic surfaces, procedural and parametric forms, and the development of the relationship between architecture and geometry. In the first half of the semester, teams will take as a starting point one of Claes Oldenburg’s multiples, the Geometric Mouse from 1971, and animate figures using seminar specific scripts in Rhino, Grasshopper and Kangaroo. This playful procedure makes possible new arrangements of parts through rigging and dropping in a user-definied environment. Shifting from digital to ananlog, a ‘soft sculpture’ of Geometric Mouse will be produced and exhibitied alongside the graphic prints. In the second half of the semester, two related exercises will focus on animating and rendering three dimensional characters. These exercises work back and forth between digital rendering in Keyshot and physical rendering in SCI-Arc’s Robot House with assistance from Curime Batliner. --2GA Visual Studies Syllabus
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Rendering of the distorted Mickey model, done in a way that produces a mis-reading between the model and the background. ABOVE: Images produced from dropping a digital model of Claes Oldenburg’s Geometric Mouse, while projecting images of Mickey from the classic animation. The resulting images challenge the perception of 2D and 3D. Presented in a serial format based on the work of Kelley Walker. 108
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LEFT: The second of two “soft” models of Mickey Mouse inspired by Claes Oldenburg’s Geometric Mouse and soft sculptures. Made of sewn and gessoed white felt. The gesso creates a rigidity that plays with the idea of what constitutes a soft model. RIGHT: The first of two “soft” models of Mickey Mouse. Made of sewn and gessoed yellow felt. The gesso allows these to stack and stand in differet postures that would not be possible without the rigidity that the paint creates. 111
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ABOVE: Stills from videos of the distorted Mickey made using Staubli robots and colored lights, which produces the effect of a physical rendering. The videos coupled with digital renderings challenge the perception of what is made in the computer realm versus the physical realm. 113
DESIGN STUDIO II: The Duplex
Margaret Griffin, Spring 2018 The 1GB studio expands on the fundamental problems of architectural geometry and representation developed in the 1GA studio, completing the foundational studio sequence of the first year. The studio project is a duplex of two single-family homes in Los Angeles. The form and program of the duplex is framed through the analog of diptych painting: a symmetrically arrayed pair of frames that contain calibrated similarities and differences, each image is semi-complete in and of itself while simultaneously comprising a part of a whole. --1GB Design Studio Syllabus
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Axonometric rendering of the duplex on its site in Frogtown, Los Angeles. LEFT: Contour study models made from stacked chipboard, plexi glass and foam. The contouring influenced the fluted texture on later models. RIGHT: Diagrams showing the geometry that were extruded to form the mass and void relationship of the form and the distribution of private versus public spaces in the house. 116
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When prompted with the question of what is a diptych, I sought to find strategies that formed non-traditional diptychs. Thinking of Jeff Wall’s photograph Double Portrait, which is a single image composed in a way that forms two distinct sides that are wholey attached and can only be viewed as one, I adopted this method as a way to conceive my duplex. Even though the earlier contour models suggest stacking, I envisioned the mass as having been carved or excavated from solid stone. The fluted texture aids in the stone reading but it also serves to highlight and differentiate the curvature on the mass. Additionally, the fluting creates a second ground plane on the roof that can be appreciated along the ceiling on the second floors of the duplex. 118
ABOVE: Rendering of the facade of the duplex as viewed from Mellon Avenue. In between the two halves of the house is a covered, communal, outdoor space that is differentiated by fluted texture on the underside of the house. RIGHT: Rendering of a side elevation that shows the profile of the fluting on the roof of one of the halves.
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TOP ROW: Rendered sections of the duplex, highlighting the relationship between the house and its courtyards. 120
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BOTTOM ROW: Second and first floor plans of the duplex, respectively. One half of the duplex has private space on the first floor and the public spaces on the second. The other half is programed inversly. 121
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Final powder printed model sitting on a site made of plexi glass. The fluting on the underside of the duplex is reflected in the surface of the plexi ground plane. ABOVE: Detail of the entrance to the left duplex. RIGHT: Detail of the articulated light well that makes the right half of the duplex resemble a tea kettle. 124
DESIGN STUDIO II BELOW LEFT: Detail of the large front window and interior stair of the right half of the duplex. BELOW RIGHT: Detail of the backside of the left half of the duplex. NEXT SPREAD: Rendering of the duplex from a worm’s eye view.
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VISUAL STUDIES II: Letter Form
Matthew Au & Anna Neimark, Spring 2018 This course forms the continuation of Strategies of Representation 1. It expands on the use of representational tools to emphasize formal legibility through systems of regulation, annotation and scripting. The assignments focus on building precision and intentionality toward architectural drawing and developing a critical sensibility to the inherent bias in each medium of representation. Students will analyze a letter form, through exercises in constructing, regulating, transforming, projecting, and rendering. The characters of Le Romain du Roi, developed in late 17th and early 18th century France by the decree of Louis XIV will offer the starting point for drawing and modeling exercises. Each exercise will require a rigorous method of working with the digital platforms of Grasshopper, Rhino, and Illustrator, among others, to examine and describe geometry, form, and character. Emphasis will be placed on developing precision in the representational process through the translation of digital work into physical drawings. Students will develop a sensibility toward paper tone and texture, as well as ink and laser printing technologies. The faktura of the physical drawing will be an essential design component of the final rendered image. --1GB Visual Studies Syllabus
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LEFT: Grayscale rendering of the first iteration of the za letter form extrusions, where both the letter z and letter a are legible. RIGHT: Grayscale rendering of the second iteration of the za letter form extrusions, where the letter z is more prominent than the letter a. 133
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LEFT: Colored rendering of the combined za against a bit-mapped background,letter wearing a “sweater”-more specifically a fur trimed cloak-derived from scripting in Grasshopper. This figure was fondly reffered to as “Spray Tan Liberace,” as we were encouraged to amphropormorphise our letters and give them personality. RIGHT: Detail of the cloacked letter against a bitmapped background. 135
DESIGN STUDIO I: The Library
Anna Neimark, Fall 2017 The 1GA studio introduces students to the central problems of architecture—geometry, form, and space—through the technologies of their description—diagramming, drawing, and model making. Introductory exercises emphasize the role of drawing and analysis as both descriptive and generative. Students pay close attention to the development of ideas that inform an iterative and creative process for working with different media, including physical models, two-dimensional drawings, and digital interfaces. The course culminates in the design of a small public library in Los Angeles. --1GA Design Studio Syllabus
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DESIGN STUDIO I PREVIOUS: Plan oblique flat rendering of the Library as viewed from the corner of Florence Avenue and Van Ness Avenue. LEFT: Paper model of the cropped smoke cell. Green paper is used to index where the legs of the model were cut.
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Wire frame model of the cropped smoke cell. Painted a manila color to match the paper model.
The precedent for this library is Tony Smith’s sculpture, Smoke, on permanent display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This process began by studying the sculpture in great detail to understand how the inner cell of the sculpture produces both a hexagonal cell and a cube depending on how it is viewed—orthogonally versus in plan or elevation. These two models are cropped from the original sculpture through a set of rules delivered to the whole studio. Cropped with a box no smaller than 11”x11”x11” and no larger than
14”x14”x14” where three faces chop through the legs at intersection and three faces remove the entire limb that it intersects. Despite the perscriptive ruleset, the results varried greatly from student to student. At the time my goal was to emphaize one of the corners. Looking back on it now, the cantelevered portion at the top right of the above model lends itself to the cantelevered roofline of the final library design.
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A new hybrid shape was created by combining and altering three objects that looked like a hexagon when drawn in plan—a cube rotated onto its point, a cell from “Smoke,” and a hexagonal-shaped tile. The hybrid shape served as the basis for the form of the library. These study models were crucial to the design process because they led to discoveries in the material that I carried over to the midterm and final models. Flaps in the surface model served as a way to disrupt the corners and as a way to wrap the hybrid cell without resorting to an excessive use of triangular planes. The materiality of the foamcore helped me develop interior flaps. Instead of wrapping a material on the inside, it wraps itself. 140
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LEFT: Hybrid cell wire frame model, displayed in a posture that allows the implication of the hexagonal shape to still be legible. CENTER: Surface pattern model. RIGHT: Foam core board model. Built to start exploring thickness of material and the concept of pochĂŠ. 141
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The texture of the painted foam core board and the gaps between the joints informed the concept of the final model. The material qualities of the foam core board resembled the smooth and rough surfaces of carved stone. Additionally, the flaps on the inside and the outside of the model became means by which to separate and navigate space. 142
ABOVE: Exterior of midterm model. RIGHT: Interior view of the midterm section model.
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DESIGN STUDIO I TOP ROW: First and second floors, respectively, of Library. The wavy texture of the walls represents wall texture of the actual building and model. BOTTOM ROW: Two section drawings of the library. The wavy texture of the walls represents wall texture of the actual building and model.
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ABOVE: Detail of the exterior stair on the library. RIGHT: Detail of the perforated scrim element on the exterior. NEXT SPREAD: Photograph of the interior of the final model, highlighting the Stonehenge like quality of the hunks of stone stacking and leaning against each other. 146
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VISUAL STUDIES I: The Jig
Matthew Au & Alfie Koetter, Spring 2018 The 1GA Visual Studies course is structured as both a technical course, which introduces students to the conventions, tools, and procedures of architectural drawing and form making, and, as a general survey that provides an introduction to the ideas, debates, and formats underpinning the role of representation in architecture. Following these two objectives, the course is conceived of as two concurrent but distinct parts: the assignments, which focus narrowly on the interrelated roles of geometry, instruction, and instrumentation; and the lectures, which broadly examine the various modes of description related to the multiple audiences in both its discipline and practice. While both tracks of the course are initially organized around delineated formats, ie instruction vs output, or drawings that represent vs drawings that direct, the objective of this course is to present a contemporary condition where such distinctions are unstable and muddy. --1GA Visual Studies Syllabus
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An unrolled tetrahedra-the same shape that made up the joinery in Tony Smith’s Smoke-was used to create a series of curves. With one face in a fixed position, the tip of another face acted as a stylus. As each face folded up in space, the stylus drew the curve. The curves were swept to form 3D thick curves, which in turn were cut up using boolean planes in order to create a unique form. The purpose of this visual studies project was to design a jig-a device that holds a piece of MDF and
guides it against the bandsaw-in order to build the 3D curved piece that I designed through the earlier exercises. However, paradoxically, the piece is actually the jig and is used to design and fabricate something to create itself. I have designed a jig that operates by getting pinned with dowels in different configurations on the sled. This allows the same jig to be used to make five very different cuts just with the use of some additional components to hold the piece of MDF in place.
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Diagrams demonstrating how the curve components were swept to form 3D, thick curves, and then were cut up using boolean planes in order to find the curved piece that would get built with the jig. LEFT: Diagrams of the sequence of a tetrahedra folding in space to “draw” the aformentioned curve. ABOVE: Plan of the jig and it’s components RIGHT: Isometric drawings of the jig pieces, illustrating how the additional pieces are attached to the jig with dowels. 153
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Final Project--The Jig
NOTES: Starting position for jig on sled for curve cut. 7/8“ dowel is placed in hole P1 to allow the jig to pivot on the sled. 2” dowels are place in holes P2 and P3 as stoppers during the pivot. Pivot will occur in a counter clockwise direction while simultaneously pushing the sled forward. The sled is pushed forward until the sled stopper hits the base plate of the band saw.
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Notes: Sled slides along the bed of the band saw. Jig (next page) secures to the sled with 1/4” diameter dowels. All holes (indicated by P and S designations) are 1/4“ in diameter. Hole P1 is intended for a 7/8” long dowels that pivots to make the curve cut. P2 and P3 are intended for 2“ long dowels that act as stoppers to align the starting and ending points for the jig during the curve cut. A dowel going through hole S1a will go through the corresponding J1a hole on the jig.
Cut #3: Starting position for jig on sled for curve cut. 7/8“ dowel is placed in hole P1 to allow the jig to pivot on the sled. 2” dowels are place in holes P2 and P3 as stoppers during the pivot. Pivot will occur in a counter clockwise direction while simultaneously pushing the sled forward. The sled is pushed forward until the sled stopper hits the base plate of the band saw. End point of the curve cut.
The jig secures to the sled with 1/4” dowels. The stopper and wedges secure to the jig with dowels. The stopper has an internal 90 degree angle that holds the material into place. Wedge 1 is used during cut #3 and wedge 2 is used during cut #5. The stopper is used during the first four of the five cuts.
Cut #4: Jig is secured to sled with 2” long dowels in holes 4Ja, 4Jb, 4Sa and 4Sb. The stopper is secured to the jig in holes H4a and H4b. Please note the jig is placed on the opposite side of the blade from the other four cuts. The material is rotated onto its side. The jig is secured to the sled in holes J5a, J5b, S5a and S5b using 2” dowels. Wedge 2 is secured to the jig in holes H5a and H5b using 7/8“ dowels. At this stage in the cutting, the material will perfectly nestle inside of the wedge. The sled is pushed forward until the sled stopper hits the base plate of the band saw.
Cut #1: Two 2” dowels are used to secure the stopper to the jig and the jig to the sled using holes J1a, J1b, S1a and S1b. The sled is pushed forward until the sled stopper hits the base plate of the band saw. Starting material is 5x5x1/2“ MDF. Cut #2: Stopper and wedge are secured to the jig with 2” long dowels in holes H2a and H2b. Wedge is placed under the stopper. The jig is secured to the sled with 2” long dowels in holes J2a and J2b. The sled is pushed forward until the sled stopper hits the base plate of the band saw.
Cut #5 The jig is secured to the sled in holes J5a, J5b, S5a and S5b using 2” dowels. Wedge 2 is secured to the jig in holes H5a and H5b using 7/8“ dowels. At this stage in the cutting, the material will perfectly nestle inside of the wedge. The sled is pushed forward until the sled stopper hits the base plate of the band saw.
LEFT: Two pages from the construction document set that outlines how to use the jig for the five band saws cuts in order to build the curved piece. ABOVE: The text instructions from the construction documents for all five cuts. RIGHT: The final piece that is created at the band saw by using the jig. 155
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LEFT: Stills from a stop-motion animation showing the jig in use for all five cuts. The animation incorporated my hands moving the pieces and the pieces moving on their own. Although made out of foam, the sled, jig, dowels, stoppers and wedges were all painted to mimic the appearance of MDF. 157
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PARALAX John Cooper, Spring 2020 Students’ final research projects will analyse an aspect of the history of movement and architecture through a synthesis of visual media and critical written contemporary. --Paralax Essay Assignment
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Shimmerology This essay is the companion piece to a 10-minute video where I become my own pursuit system1 and film the following experience three times, on three days, at approximately the same time. With a camera and tripod set up in the back seat of my car, positioned behind my head, I try to capture—as closely as possible—what I see from the driver’s seat.2 Drive along the ten-east freeway in the mid- to late afternoon—when the sun is behind you, in line with the agglomeration of towers on the Downtown Los Angeles skyline—and you will see a building shimmering on the horizon.3 I have been obsessed with this building on my commute since, by happenstance, I left home later in the day than usual and experienced this phenomena. The shimmer relies on light, movement, and perception. Although it can be appreciated from a standstill, like when traffic brings vehicles to a halt on the freeway or when viewing from a nearby parking structure, the choreography of a car moving along the bends and curves of the freeway brings the experience to life. Vittoria Di Palma explores a facet of shimmering buildings in her text, “Blurs, Blots and Clouds: Architecture and the Dissolution of the Surface.” Her analysis of blurred edges mirrors the way I have approached and thought about the shimmer. She begins by looking at Uta Barth’s intentionally blurry photographs, which explore the relationship of the camera to the human eye. “With their negation of the surface, [the] photographs give the eye nowhere to rest.”4 In analog photography there are two times the image is focused—once in the camera when making the picture and a second time when enlarging and printing the im-
age from the negative. Even though Barth’s photograph is blurry to the viewer, the grain on the print would be sharp. At a recent talk given by Jeff Wall, he discusses the importance of the film grain in his photographs. He likens the “swirl of grain” in a print to painting, stating that it “contains all the cosmic energy of a Pollock.”5 When you get close to Wall’s almost life-size photographs, you can see all the dots of grain that make up the image; once you step back, the granules blend together into a comprehensive image. The description of Barth’s photograph introduces the reader to the way Di Palma thinks about the surface of Herzog & de Meuron’s Laban Dance Center—similar to how Jeff Wall’s photographs influence how I think about the surface of several of their other buildings.6 Di Palma concludes her analysis of Laban by discussing the structure and surface, describing it as “tension between an impression of the building as a stable volume and as a mutable object; between a solid and a blur.”7 Again, Di Palma’s theorization is close to my own—a shimmering building produces a discrepancy between their literal presence as a solid object and the surfaces that clad it. In both cases, the facade produces an atmospheric effect that is autonomous from its solidity. The building puts on a guise and pretends to be something it is not. The coloration of the Laban Dance Center was inspired by an iridescent oil slick on water.8 Iridescence naturally occurs when two transparent substrates are layered—such as a bubble, which is soap sandwiched between two layers of air, and an oil slick, which is oil sandwiched between air and water.9 When coming into contact with these substrates, rays of light are refracted and reflected at different angles that interfere with each
1. Term co-opted from the company Pursuit Systems, Inc, which fabricates and operates camera rigs on top of vehicles for the purpose of filming other vehicles in motion, in order to describe the subject-object relationship in studying architecture in motion. 2. Thank you to Christopher Fedorak, a photographer and my partner in quarantine, for helping me set up the shot and sitting in the back seat to keep the tripod from tipping over while filming. 3. I write about this anecdote similarly in an essay titled, “Shimmering Pixels” (Dec. 2019) that I wrote for Marrikka Trotter’s class and in my thesis prep statement titled, “Tremulous” (April 2020). Both texts are precursors to this one as I continue to develop a theory on the shimmer. 4. Vittoria Di Palma, “Blurs, Blots and Clouds: Architecture and the Dissolution of the Surface,” AA Files, no. 54 (Summer 2006): 25. 5. Jeff Wall, “Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand Conversation” (lecture, Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles, CA, March 3, 2020). 6. Herzog & de Meuron’s Signal Box Auf dem Wolf (1994), Ricola Factory (1993), Dominus Winery (1998) and Institute of Hospital Pharmaceuticals (1998). 7. Di Palma, “Blurs, Blots and Clouds,” 28. 8. Di Palma, “Blurs, Blots and Clouds,” 26. 9. R. Daniel Overheim and David L. Wagner, Light and Color, 1982, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 232. 159
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other. Interference can be deconstructive or constructive—some colors are removed from the reflected light that produces the color we see and some colors reflect especially well.10 More simply, iridescence can be described as “a visual characteristic attributed to surfaces that change in color with viewing angle.”11 It also occurs in butterflies, birds and fish, where it is referred to as “structural colors” because the color is not produced by pigment (like melatonin) but by nanostructural tissues.12 Although the mechanism by which the iridescence is achieved in insects and animals differs from that in a bubble, the resulting manipulation of the light is similar. For Laban, Herzog & de Meuron mimic the iridescent effect through the application and blending of pigment. Iridescence in insects and animals allures mates and camouflages them from predators. Some animals position themselves to control their viewing angle, allowing them to direct a muted color at a predator, while simultaneously directing an iridescent bright color at “intentional receivers.” Alternatively, some animals use their iridescent coloration to mimic their surroundings, and others use it to flash bright light to scare or confuse predators.13 The combination of these opposing functions—the ability to allure and repel—in one mechanism is confounding; this same duality makes the shimmer so enthralling. In describing the etymology of iridescence, Stéphanie Doucet and Melissa Meadows list commonly used terms to describe the effect: “rainbow-like, nacreous, opalescent, shimmering, metallic or sparkling.”14 Both Oxford English Dictionary definitions of shimmer (verb and noun) include the phrase, tremulous light. Shimmer conjures images of sparkles, glitter and shine, whereas tremulous relates to human characteristics of shakes, quakes and tremors. A building possessing a human quality of a tremor, is unsettling because it disrupts the idea that buildings are stable. Much like Barth’s blurred photographs, the tremulousness prevents the eye from
resting when viewing a shimmer. As you ascend to the top of the on-ramp at Normandie, the building emerges from behind the incline, like a sunrise. Even from this distance, the shimmer is visible; the small, subtle vibrations resemble static on a television. The other buildings appear still by comparison. As the freeway merges, the building becomes ensconced behind freeway signs and trees. For a while, only fragments of a ceaselessly shimmering facade peak through the “greenery.” At a time when stone and timber were the prominent building materials, August Schmarsow argued that a phenomenological experience of a building could only be felt from the inside. However, the power of a shimmering building’s effect can be appreciated from the outside and even from far away. In Kissing Architecture, Sylvia Lavin does not discriminate between effects occurring inside or outside because “surfaces are where architecture gets close to turning into something else and therefore exactly where it becomes vulnerable and full of potential.”15 Schmarsow advocates for a person’s presence in order to activate the experience. He asks, if building tectonics are what “constitute the architectural work of art, or does the work of art come into being only in that instant when human aesthetic reflection begins to transpose itself into the whole and to understand and appreciate all the parts with a pure and free vision?”16 The phenomena of the building is experienced as the viewer’s vantage point and perception change. Georges Seurat was aware that there was a “part played by the spectator in the making of the work of art,” without someone there to perceive it, a shimmer cannot exist.17 Seurat’s painting technique utilizes pointillism, where “thousands of tiny dots of different colors produce a variety of color sensations.”18 This is a form
10. Overhiem and Wagner, Light and Color, 233. 11. Doucet and Meadows, “Iridescence,” 115. 12. Stéphanie M. Doucet and Melissa G. Meadows, “Iridescence: a Functional Perspective,” Interface Focus, no. 6 (2009) 116. doi:10.1098/ rsif.2008.0395.focus 13. Doucet and Meadows, “Iridescence,” 122-124. 14. “The term derives from the Latin and Greek ‘iris,’ meaning rainbow, and also refers to Greek goddess Iris, who is the personification of the rainbow and a messenger to the gods.” Doucet and Meadows, “Iridescence,” 115. 15. Sylivia Lavin, Kissing Architecture, 2011, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 26. 16. August Schmarsow, “The Essence of Architectural Creation,” Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1873-1893, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Iknoomou, 1994, (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities), 285. 17. Crary, “Seurat’s Modernity,” 62. 18. Overhiem and Wagner, Light and Color, color plate 5. 160
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of “color mixing by the [viewer’s] eye,” instead of by the artist’s paint brush.19 The use of the word sensations denotes the necessity of a human counterpart and hints at the subjectivity of the experience. In the exhibition catalogue that accompanied the 1990 Seurat show at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Johnathan Crary examines the prominent role the viewer plays in Seurat’s paintings.
blending to create mixed hues.”21 He narrates a scenario
“One of the key ways we experience the abstraction of color in a work by Seurat is through our own physical movement—back and forth from a position close enough so that the individual points of color are visible and the artificial and constructed nature of the surface is overwhelmingly evident, to a more distant point at which the surface coalesces into a unified and shimmering image of a recognizable world.”20
Through a syntactical volley, Burnett emphasizes that the subject-object dance is what makes the shimmer powerful. It can be appreciated from close up and far away but the movement of the viewer transforms passive reception into an active experience. As often as I see this building shimmer, more often I drive by at the wrong time of day or when the sun is behind clouds and see only a prosaic tower. Despite learning of the mechanism behind the effect, you can always step back and engage the shimmer again—there is no end to the back and forth; reflect and refract; repel and allure.
Unlike when shimmering acts as a synonym to describe the shine of iridescence, Crary uses the term in the same way I do—to describe a transformation of material effect based on vantage point. Seurat’s paint dots, Wall’s film grain, and this building’s facade may blur, tremble and dissolve from far away but upon approach, dazzle with their intricate level of detail. D. Graham Burnett further illustrates this point in his discussion of pointillism as a restoration technique, where pixelated “dots” of pigment act as a “post-Seurat, high-modernist technique of optical
“So, imagine, I’m standing ten feet from the painting, and the pixilated region looks exactly like the left shoulder of the Madonna. But once I come close, it resolves back into its pixelated form. [...] Back and forth. Past and present. Back and forth. Image and canvas. Back and forth. Idea and thing.”22
You eagerly await the moment where the building reappears. Down the road after all the cars finish this long merge, you finally get an unencumbered view. You are as close as you can get, while still experiencing the shimmer. Then the highway curves, and it disappears behind you and, until next time, these magical three minutes are over.
FIGURE #1: Still from the aformentioned movie, 10-East Normandie to Maple, 3 times.
19. Overhiem and Wagner, Light and Color, 45. 20. Jonathan Crary, “Seurat’s Modernity,” in Seurat at Gravelines: The Last Landscape, 1990, by Ellen Wardwell Lee (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art), 62. 21. D. Graham Burnett and David Gissen, “The Nebulous and the Infinitesimal,” in Architecture is All Over, ed. Esther Choi and Marrikka Trotter (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 94. 22. Ibid. 161
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THE OTHER SHAPE: Architecture After Image Marrikka Trotter, Fall 2019 The course is structured as a collaborative incubator for new architectural ideals; each student is asked to participate in the risky work of inventive research and rigorous projection. Commit to a line of inquiry and craft a final paper that evinces original thinking and a command of relevant sources. --The Other Shape Essay Assignment
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Shimmering Pixels
Drive along the ten-east freeway in the late afternoon and you will see an unusual visual phenomenon—one which I have only seen on this commute once before—a single building, removed from the rest of the downtown skyline, shimmering in the sunlight. The facade, which is composed of a grid of fenestration, separated by vertical protrusions that look like oversized louvers, produces a series of tight-knit stripes. In the mid- to late afternoon when the sun is oriented horizontally, in line with the building, the stripes create a moiré effect.1 The effect enthralls because it is an outlier among the agglomeration of towers, whose larger windows and curtain walls lack the ability to produce a moiré; they lack the ability shimmer in space. The building is positioned such that the visual effect continues for some time, until the road curves to the south, circumventing Downtown Los Angeles. Just as the carriage turns back into a pumpkin at midnight, once the viewer’s relationship between the building and
the sun changes, the spell ends and the magic is gone; it is just a regular building again. Completed in 1965, William Pereira’s Occidental Life Building was the second tallest building in the city.2 While the building shimmers, perceiving the delineation between the windows is challenging. However, when a pedestrian looks up at the building from street level, all the pieces that make up the facade and allow it to abstract into a simpler form from a distance, are visible. On the highway the mullion articulation collapses in space, making the lines appear closer together. The building flickers in and out of focus depending on the vantage point and so does the viewer’s understanding of it. Zago Architecture has designed two projects where the facade obfuscates when viewed from a distance. Completed in 2001, the twenty-five feet tall entry tower of the Korean Presbyterian Church of Metropolitan Detroit is a high point among the low, long facade that makes up the rest of the building.3 A black and white
1. Moiré is defined as “an independent usually shimmering pattern seen when two geometrically regular patterns (such as two sets of parallel lines or two halftone screens) are superimposed especially at an acute angle. 2. Nathan Masters, “City Dig: The Loneliest Skyscraper in Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Magazine, March 4, 2014, https://www.lamag.com/ citythinkblog/citydig-the-loneliest-skyscraper-in-los-angeles/. It is now the USC Tower. 3. “Korean Presbytarian Church of Metropolitan Detroit,” Zago Architecture, December 13, 2019, http://www.zagoarchitecture.com/KoreanPresbyterian-Church-of-Metropolitan-Detroit. 163
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photograph of the building centers on the elevation of the entry tower, which is composed of rows of louvers behind glass and framed by brick. The expanse of brick is wider on the sides and narrower on the top and bottom, with the number of bricks on the bottom decreasing to accommodate the slope of the sidewalk. Each louver is four inches deep, three-eighths of an inch thick, and is spaced to line up with the grout of the bricks.4 The glass is made up of three equally-sized horizontal panes, which are subdivided into thirds with thick mullions. The leftmost and rightmost panes are approximately the same width as the brick; however, the middle pane is wider. Unnoticeable at first glance, the entry tower entombs a large cross. Elements of the design, in conjunction with the black and white rendering of the photograph shroud the cross. The vertical axis of the cross fits neatly inside the perimeter of the center panes of glass, making it difficult to read the edges of its form. Illuminated from the top by bright recessed lights, the head of the cross blends into its background. The scenery behind the viewer reflects in the bottom portion of the glass, obscuring the feet of the cross. From this vantage point the tilted angle of the louvers makes them appear subsequently thicker in each third, allowing less of the cross peak through. Finally, the ambient lighting outside casts louver-shaped shadows on the cross—stripes. In Abbott H. Thayer’s text, “Camouflage,” he discusses the visual effects of stripes and monochromes. In the image captioned, “the Zebra concealed; the ass revealed” the black stripes blend into the foliage in the foreground, while the white stripes blend into the blue sky, rendered white by the grayscale.5 However, if this were a color photograph, the white stripes would materialize against the sky, making the zebra easy to spot. For Thayer, the stripes allow the animal to blend into the foliage to hide from predators. Thus, in the entry tower composes a condition where the cross blends into its surroundings. Much like Thayer’s description, the monochrome cross is able to blend in because the overhead and ambient light create gradients and stripes, respectively.
Color photographs of the entry tower reveal a blushing cross. In the black and white photograph, the red blends into a sea of gray-scale tones, whereas, in the color image the red emerges from behind the louvers; just as a black and white zebra would against a blue sky. Although the camouflage—through the blurring of the cross into its surroundings—is less effective in color, the louvers still succeed at disrupting the smooth image of the cross. Additionally, the layering of the shadow from the louvers and reflection of leafless branches veil the image further. A three-quarters view of the entry tower reveal both arms of the cross stretching out beyond their enclosure. The arms, however, are respectful of the boundary and only extend as far as the brick protrudes from the glass. Through the top window we see the louvers on the other side of the entry tower are tilted in the same direction as the front. Below one arm lies an air vent with even more louvers, aligned to form a continuous line with those on the window above it. Beyond the entry tower lies a corridor that leads to the main space. There is never an opportunity to experience the whole cross; there is a lack of access. From the outside, the louvers and the thick pillars of brick disrupt the legibility of it. Walk in and you are confronted by a large, red mass. As you move through the vestibule, you can glance up but will glean little from the oblique form. The cross was nearly invisible in the black and white image, but it is no easier to behold now that it is in color. The aforementioned photograph of Zago Architecture’s entry tower bears a resemblance to a three-quarters view of Herzog and de Meuron’s Signal Box. Both buildings are made up of facades, enclosing an inaccessible object and offer glimpses of what waits inside. The outer skin of the Signal Box, made up of louvers, encloses an interior building. There are similarities in the composition of the facade—the stripes of the closed louvers frame the partially open ones. The louvers that are visible through the window on the other side of the entry tower, mirror the smaller
4. Laura Bouwman of Zago Architecture, text message exchange, November 7, 2019. 5. Abbott H. Thayer, “Camouflage,” The Scientific Monthly 7.6 (December 1918), 481-494. 6. David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi , Surface Architecture, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002), 211. 7. “Signal Box 4 Auf dem Wolf,” El Croquis 87 (1997), 79. 8. Marrikka Trotter, “The Other Shape: Architecture After Image,” (class discussion, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA, October 31, 2019). Comparison pointed out by Marrikka during a discussion, following my presentation of this topic. 164
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expanse of open louvers on the narrow facade of the Signal Box. Although the entry tower lacks an antenna adorning the top of the structure, the head of the cross reaches upwards, pushing against the confines of its ceiling. Both produce a moiré, although the Signal Box does so more readily than the entry tower. Perhaps the louvers in the entry tower were designed to blur content rather than blur an image. David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi’s book Surface Architecture highlights an aspect of the Signal Box that is apparent in Zago and Pereira’s towers. “Herzog and de Meuron consider surface effects as part of the material and construction palette of a project. In this way their works question the space between functional necessities and ornament [...]”6 Since wall section drawings indicate airflow, we know the louvers are functional but based on an interior image of the louvers, they do not appear operable. The section drawings state that the louvers have a fixed “öppnungs winkel,” or a tilting angle, of sixty degrees.7 Each louver measures 175 millimeters long and where they are closed the top overlaps the bottom by 25 millimeters. Additionally, the elevations do not indicate multiple configurations of each facade, thus confirming that while the louvers do permit airflow, they are not intended to open and close to allow for climate adjustments. Beyond the louvers we see four rectangles glowing, like the eyes of a monster in the dark. What lies behind the facade is less apparent in the Signal Box than in the entry tower; however, the lack of clarity in both compels the viewer to keep looking. With its antenna and the fuzzy static image produced by the stripes on the facade, the Signal Boxes resemble televisions.8 This comparison reminds me of the third grade when a teacher or a classmate revealed that all images on a TV were made up of red, blue and green rectangles and if you got up close, you would be able to see them. First thing when I arrived home, I sat on the carpet, scooched up close, and pushed my nose against the screen. I was in so much awe over the breakdown of the images into their tiny rectangles that
I stared until my eyeballs hurt. This was my first experience with pixels. A conversation between D. Graham Burnett and David Gissen on the “Nebulous and the Infinitesimal,” concludes with them discussing “dots” of paint— “nearly invisible pixelated strokes” —as the solution for art restoration.
“So, imagine, I’m standing ten feet from the painting, and the pixelated region looks exactly like the left shoulder of the Madonna. But once I come close, it resolves back into its pixelated form. At a distance, I grasp the idea of the original work. Up close, I immediately discern the historical object of the original work. Back and forth. Past and present. Back and forth. Image and canvas. Back and forth. Idea and thing.”9
Despite walking up to the image and seeing the individual pixels, the viewer can step back again, and the awareness of the pixels does not impede them from re-engaging with their original experience. The same goes for these buildings; realizing how the building operates at a fine grain does not diminish its magic. Zago Architecture’s winning competition entry for the Visual and Performing Arts Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago achieves blurring through pointillism—the technique employed by Georges Seurat—instead of stripes.10 Although this project remains unbuilt, it is comprised of three discrete pieces that utilize different tectonic strategies. The piece which houses the two theatres is made up of series of layered panels. A large-scale mockup, measuring twenty-two by forty-eight inches, was produced for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.11 By looking at the model and the panels, the viewer catches a glimpse of how they would experience the building from close up—with the large model—and far away—with the small model. The mockup is comprised of four layers of metal; blue, pink and yellow with a green background panel. Each color reads as a jagged line with small, square bites taken out of it. From one layer to the next the articulation differs, producing moments of slippage where
9. Graham Burnett and David Gissen, “The Nebulous and the Infinitesimal,” ed. Esther Choi and Marrikka Trotter (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 94. 10. Andrew Zago, conversation, October 30, 2019. 11. “SCI-Arc Faculty Exhibit at the 2017 Chicago Architectural Biennial,” News, SCI-Arc, October 11, 2017, https://www.sciarc.edu/ news/2017/sci-arc-faculty-exhibit-at-the-2017-chicago-architecture-biennial. 165
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one color is more visible than the other three, usually blue and pink. Each larger panel is made up of smaller ones, which measure approximately twenty-two by sixty inches.12 Despite the stripes formed by the structural frame, the pixelated pattern refuses to produce a moiré. Looking closely at the panels in a given area, the surrounding distorted stripes share the same ratio of blue to pink to yellow. However, as you pull away the gradation becomes more apparent; there are patches that are more densely blue. This gradient, coupled with the layering of the panels at the edges and corners, inhibits crisp edges to focus on. The pixels are not sharp because they are shifting and overlapping—from a distance they fuse together to form a fuzzy hue, articulated by an underlying system of stripes. A high-resolution building like the Visual and Performing Arts Center switches between resolution categories as the vantage point of the viewer changes. It may look fuzzy from far away but sharpens as the details of the layered facade emerge. The same concept applies to large format photography. When looking at a Jeff Wall photograph close up, all of the pixels—which allow the image to be high resolution and in turn printed so big— are discernable. From a distance those individual pixels blend together, forming the cohesive image that we see. Although, the jagged edges of the panels preclude a moiré
effect from occurring, they still produce a blurring and an inability to understand the tectonics of the façade. To differing degrees, all four of these buildings may blur, shimmer, and dissolve at a distance but as you approach—push your nose up against the screen, so to speak—you are dazzled by the intricate level of detail that make up the facade. The aforementioned buildings appear low-resolution from a distance but are in fact all high-resolution. These projects conjure similarities to Jeff Kipnis’s description of the allure of the Signal Box, where it calls to you and you do not know why. He asks, “would it be too much to liken them to sirens, to temptresses that lure the unsuspecting into dangerous territory? [...] Do you not also feel the song of the Signal Box? Are you not enticed by it[...]?”13 What is magical about these buildings (and is especially effective in the Visual and Performing Arts Center) is the visual effect they produce at a distance. They look blurry and therefore out of focus; easily dismissed because of their illegibility. However, the mystery of the blurring and what these objects contain draws us in. Although, we do not know what is awaiting us, we are perplexed, we are curious, and we need to find out more. Once we get closer, we are rewarded because the fine grain of detail yields discoveries. FIGURE #1: (First page) William Pereira’s tower creating a moiré, as seen from a parking structure adjacent to the ten freeway, photographed by Zoe Malecki. FIGURE #2: (Left) Facade of the entry tower as seen from the parking lot and the first image I ever saw of this building, photographed by Balthazar Koran, image courtesy of Zago Architecture. FIGURE #3-4: (Opposite top left) Colored photograph of the entry tower. (Opposite top right) Three-quarters view of the entry tower, showing how the cross engages with the structure. Both photogrphed by Balthazar Koran, both images courtesy of Zago Architecture.
12. Ibid 13. Jeffery Kipnis, p. 22-28 “The Cunning of Cosmetics,” El Croquis 87 (1997), 24. 166
HISTORY THEORY FIGURE #5: (Right) Three-quarters view of the Signal Box, image from El Croquis 87. FIGURE #6: (Below left) Model of the Visual and Performing Arts Center, photograph by and courtesy of Zago Architecture. FIGURE #7: (Below right) 1/4� scale mockup of the facade system on display at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, photographed by Andrew Bruah, courtesy of Zago Architecture.
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RUIN Russell Thomsen, Spring 2019 Reflect on the topics we have covered (ruin as remnant, knowledge, processes resistance, politic, construct and memorial), narrow it down so as not to be overly discursive or summary, and make an observational argument about a point of view concerning ruins. --Ruin Essay Assignment
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Permanence vs. Persistence: The Preservation and Ruin of Photography, Relics, and Dolmens Although the focus for my team’s group presentation was on sport venues and the ritual of the Olympics, our meetings began with discussions about modern art that is meant to decay and the use of materials, like stone and marble, where the ruination is intentionally a slow process. During the presentation: Sports & Ruin and the discussion that followed, the concept of permanence versus persistence kept coming up, particularly, when comparing the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and its continuing legacy to past Olympics.1 Despite, very few of the structures still standing—temporary buildings were employed using all the available scaffolding west of the Mississippi—the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics are remembered as colorful, extremely organized and most notably, under budget. Very few buildings were intended to be permanent but the event persists in the memories of those who lived here at the time and is admired by those who have heard about it. Compared to the numerous other Olympic events where the structures are either destroyed, decrepit and forgotten, or (often unsuccessfully) repurposed. The image of the torch pulpit from the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics is a powerful image of the sad state these monuments fall into—it is sometimes easier to let these structures ruin than pay to have them removed (fig. 1). However, these are not ruins that are revered like those of the pyramids of Teotihuacan, but rather, are sad reminders of the palimpsest of capitalism and the desire for countries to outdo their neighbors on the global stage. This is not a stance on a Ruskinian ideal but simply, the path of least resistance. The contemporary artist, Phil Chang has a series of photographic prints that he allows to ruin. In fact, the subject matter portrayed in the images them-
selves is negligible because the self-destructive nature of the material is the real subject. At the beginning of an exhibit, these prints show sparse but well composed photographs and photograms. However, by the end of the show, the images are gone and all that is left are a series of monochromes. He keeps the framed images wrapped in black, light-tight plastic until it is time to uncover them (fig. 2). Once the plastic is taken off and the images are exposed to light “the image very quickly begins to fade and after several hours, pretty much disappears, leaving instead a reddish brown monochrome.”2 Chang turns these static images into temporal performance pieces. Additionally, Chang elevates the value of attending the opening reception because as they fade “the pictures lingered in the memories of those who had seen them, [...] privileging oral description as the primary way in which the work’s vanished history will survive and circulate thereafter.”3 While the image is not permanent, the experience persists for those who bore witness. This desired effect is achieved by using expired, light sensitive silver gelatin paper—which gives it a murky sepia tone, otherwise if the paper were fresh, the image would fade to black—and skipping the fixing step in the development process. It is the fixer, which stops the paper from being light sensitive, fixing the image onto the page. Although this is an art piece that intentionally ruins, Chang does not allow it to fall into obsolescence. He is prepared to commodify and attribute value to these temporary pieces in a number of ways. The first is the aforementioned performance aspect of the pieces, creating a one of a kind experience for the viewer. The titles of the pieces change after they undergo this metamorphosis. What starts with the title: Two Sheets of Thick Paper on Top of Two Sheets of Thin Paper becomes: Monochrome,
1. The group presentation was done in class on March 21, 2019 with Jared Baker, Andrew Chittenden and Nicholas Gochnour, entitled “Sports & Ruin.” The presentation investigated ongoing questions and discussions in class in terms of the Olympics and sport arenas. 1. Unintended permanence & intentional obsolesence. 2. Temporary materials & temporary assembly. 3. Material persistence & geometric persistence. 2. Walter Benn Michaels Meaning & Affect: Phil Chang’s Cache, Active, Non Site, March 2012, https://nonsite.org/feature/meaning-andaffect-phil-changs-cache-active. 3. Sarah Lehir-Gaiwer, “Phil Chang, LAX Art,” Artforum, Summer 2012, https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201206/philchang-38962. 4. Walter Benn Michaels Meaning & Affect: Phil Chang’s Cache, Active, Non Site, March 2012, https://nonsite.org/feature/meaning-andaffect-phil-changs-cache-active 169
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Exposed after the transformation (fig 3 and 4).4 By changing the name, he is embracing the temporal nature of the medium. He allows the piece to become something new, like an Olympic building built for the event but with an intended re-use planned from the get go. When the piece was acquired by a museum’s permanent collection, the artist provided three copies in total—one framed to display during the exhibition, one framed and placed in a light-tight bag, and one rolled up in a lighttight bag, frameless.5 The piece hung during the show would undergo its transformation, be seen once by those lucky enough to attend the opening and then remain up for the rest of the exhibition as a monochrome, with no indication of its temporal nature except for the blurb on the wall next to it. Perhaps the second framed one will be displayed on another occasion in the distant future, however, the rolled up one never will. It is destined to remain a permanent member of the collection, everyone will know it is there but it will never be looked at because the moment it is taken out of the bag, it will begin to change. Documentation of these works in both their pre and post-exposed states, exist on the artist’s website.6 Despite the artwork’s statement of a temporary existence, installation photographs of the self-destructive images exist. The desire to preserve the before state, nearly negates the intention of the work itself. For a piece of art that is specifically designed not to be permanent, a lot of thought and intention has been placed on how it can be preserved in a museum collection for infinity. Artwork, much like ruins of architecture, are fraught with the same decisions of preservation. Incredible amounts of time and energy—electricity and otherwise—are put into maintaining spaces that slow down the aging and decay
process. In Sarah Lehir-Graiwer’s review of Chang’s show, she acknowledges the same fundamental predicament in his work that also plagues Auschwitz and Birkenau: “[each print would] rapidly degrade in the exhibition space as soon as it was brought into the light necessary to see it. Representation was caught in a double bind, its latent instability and urgency hyperbolized even as it vanished before the viewer’s eyes in an act of self-sabotage.”7 In order to appreciate the full experience of Chang’s work, the image must be exposed to the very thing that destroys it. The sheer number of people who visit the Polish extermination camps— more than one million annually—coupled with the natural degradation of temporary structures of Birkenau, that were built over 50 years ago and need restoration in order to stave off decay, creates another example of self-sabotage.8 The Auschwitz camps are still standing as a reminder to Poles, and the world at large, that these atrocities happened and it would be catastrophic if they were to ever happen again.9 Prohibiting visitors from going to Auschwitz is not an option, which is why other strategies have to be considered. In Walter Benjamin’s text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he acknowledges that art has always been reproducible, even if it was a slow and laborious process long ago. With the exception of those who devoted the time to make a copy, artworks were unique, creating what Benjamin calls “cult value.”10 However, it is not until the invention of photography that there is “the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction.”11 Benjamin argues that while the reproduction that photography makes
5. Thanks to a conversation I had with Marten Elder (a friend of Phil Chang) and Christopher Fedorak—both hold MFAs in photography— where I learned about the body of work in question. Chang first displayed this style of self-destructive photography at an exhibition at LAX Art in 2012 in Los Angeles but has since been reproduced and shown elsewhere. Although I was unable to confirm which museum holds this piece, it is either LACMA or SF MOMA. According to the artist’s CV, both hold works by Phil Chang in their permanent collection and held shows whose titles suggest that this experimental time-based photography might be included—Lens Work: Celebrating LACMA’s Experimental Photography at 50 (2015) and About Time: Photography in a Moment of Change (2016), respectively. 6. Phil Chang, “Cache Active — Installation Views,” Work, https://www.philchang.com/work/, April 21, 2019. 7. Sarah Lehir-Gaiwer, “Phil Chang, LAX Art,” Artforum, Summer 2012, https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201206/phil-chang-38962. 8. Jake Matatyaou, Nature’s Destructive Character, (The Avery Review, 2015), 1. 9. It is mandatory for all students in Poland to visit Auschwitz in order to graduate high school. As such, my father, took my sister and me there when we were ages 10 and 15 respectively. 10. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935 essay, from Illuminations, Hannah Arendt, ed. Schocken Books, 1969), 2. 11. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 6. 12. Ibid. 13. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 4. 170
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possible decreases an object’s cult value, it allows it to be shown in more places, making way for “exhibition value.”12 Additionally, the ability to reproduce, allowed for more creative freedom and experimentation because one “can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.”13 Without the ability to copy, the preciousness of the one image would prevent Chang from allowing it to self-destruct. The two extra copies make the piece a worthwhile investment for the museum that purchases it for their permanent collection. Although, under normal conditions the additional copies would devalue the image, Chang has capitalized on the limitations and the benefits of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, making this experimental artwork valuable. Although it is not considered an art work per se, the shroud of Turin is an example of one such pieces that has cult value. Famed for purportedly serving as the cloth that wrapped Jesus after he was pulled down from the cross, its authenticity as a relic is questioned. It sits in this liminal space between art and artifact because if it is indeed a forgery, it serves as a convincing piece of art. Along with the other relics that are famed to have touched Jesus—like the crown of thorns, recently rescued from the blaze at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris—its protection is paramount. As of the spring of 2017, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud was still under construction from a devastating fire that occured 30 years prior. 14 Scaffolding from restoration work, at the time in 1997, is to blame for fueling the fire and creating a destructive blaze. Although the chapel sustained major damage, firefighters managed to rescue the shroud from the the fire.15 Architecture is precious, but time and time again the cult value of relics, warrant a higher priority than the building itself. Following the fire, the shroud was stored in the Cathedral, behind a maroon curtain, behind bullet proof glass in a climate and temperature controlled room, inside of a golden tomb. During viewing hours the curtain is electronically pulled opened, allowing visitors to marvel at the
tomb and a large blown up reproduction of the face of Jesus that has been imprinted onto the fabric. The last time the shroud was out of the tomb fro public display was 2015.16 Even though the actual viewing experience is underwhelming, the aura of mystery surrounding the object is enough to draw in tourists. Another item that sits in this liminal space between artwork and another are the pavilion submissions for MOMA PS1. There is a thin line that separates small temporary pieces of architecture from large-scale pieces of installation art. In Marrikka Trotter’s piece “Architecture or Rocks” she asserts that these submissions are architecture. However, in the case of First Office’s submission, she questions its place between architecture and rocks.17 In the case of a dolmen, which we all know in popular culture from Stonehenge, our perception of the typology suggests an inherent amount of ruin. Stonehenge was built so long ago that our only perception of it is in its current state—it persists in our collective consciousness as a ruin. As such, in First Office’s proposal for their Dolmen, the stone would be treated by a nail gun.18 In renderings, drawings and model photographs, a maniacally, repetitive series of punctures dot the surface creating an element of rustication at the top of the work and along the edges, as opposed to along the bottom which is traditional in architecture (fig. 5). In this case they would be manufacturing ruin. If that is the desired aesthetic of the project and if it were to ever be built, would the structure be allowed to ruin further, naturally? Or is the manufactured texture of decay the permanent extent of the ruination and would it be preserved? Despite, not winning and not getting built, the PS1 Dolmen persists in the modern canon of architecture, serving as a reference for the new generation of young architects. As the recent tragedy at Notre Dame in Paris, is burned into our minds, the question of preservation is at the forefront of discussion. Although John Ruskin balks at the word “restoration,” calling it “the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction
14. I visited the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist Turin, Italy in May of 2017. The church housed the Holy Shroud while repairs to the chapel were completed. 15. Sarah Cascone, Closed for Nearly 30 Years, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud Reopens in Italy Following Massive Restoration Efforts, Art Net News, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chapel-holy-shroud-reopens-1358287. 16. Ibid. 17. Marrikka Trotter, “Architecture or Rocks,” Off Topic Vol. 3, Spring 2019, ed. Malecki, Guerrero, Gates, 8. 18. Anna Neimark, “A Post Conceptual Position,” Harvard GSD Lecture Re-presented for 2GB Studio, March 2019. 19. John Ruskin, “Lamp of Memory, II,” The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849; various editions), 322. 171
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out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed‌.[I]t is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture,� he is accepting of mild forms of preservation such as an iron rod used to hold a stone column together.19 However, with capitalism as the main driver in society, the fate of many ruins is determined by their success as a tourist attraction. No matter what the cost, and how many fires, Notre Dame will be rebuilt time and time again. As debates on the strategy of preservation start to percolate, the image of EugeneEmmanuel Viollet-le-Duc’s famed spire will persist as the iconic representation of the building. The holy shroud, despite rarely being seen, still manages to attract people.
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Its lack of visibility does not matter because its secrecy and the cult of art, are what attract people and after all there are photographs on the internet. There exist so many art works, that are never seen because of the urge to preserve them, we only can appreciate and know of through photographs. Is photography the medium, that allowed for this practice to be ubiquitous? Or is it the other way around and photography gave the public access to something that was always restricted? Either way, photography is what allows the things that are not permanent to be remembered and persist. And it is this same concept that allows for a building that has never been built to still exist as architecture on paper.
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FIGURE #1: (Opposite) Flame pulpit from the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo in decay (and peppered with bullet holes) following the Bosnian War, Hedwig Klawuttk. FIGURES #2-4: (Top row, from left to right) Framed piece in a light tight bag, “Plastic Over Frame,” “Two Sheets of Thick Paper on Top of Two Sheets of Thin Paper,” “Monochrome, Exposed,” all Phil Chang from Michaels. FIGURE #1: (Above) Rendering of PS1 Dolmen proposal, First Office. 173
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ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM III Erik Ghenoiu, TF: Henry Yang, Spring 2019 Choose one essay or manifestor from the Ulrich Conrads, Joan Ockman, or K. Michael Hays readers. In five to six pages proceed to situate the reading in terms of its author and its historical context, explaining what it was trying to do and what it stood for and against. Use the Frampton and at least one other history to do this. Second, analyze the reading using some of the ideas we discussed in class such as historicism, modernity/modernism, type, syle urbanism, function, et cetera. You may also bring concepts from other readings or courses as they prove useful. --Architecture & Urbanism III Essay Assignment
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Utopian Dreams Do Come True Paul Sheerbart’s text, On Glass Architecture, serves as a catalyst for the perceptions of glass to change, allowing it to gain prominence as a quintessential component of the Modernist style. He transforms clear glass from a controversial building material into a glowing utopian dream. Scheerbart’s posturing comes during the early 20th century, when the use of glass as a proper architectural material is still new and therefore debated. His admiration and belief in its substantial promise, opens the door for glass to flourish as more than just a building material for windows and greenhouses. Scheerbart’s text begins to ascribe architectural value and meaning to a material that up until this point had been snubbed and disregarded by the great architectural minds of the mid to late 19th century. Just sixty years after the Crystal Palace faces rebukes from Ruskin, glass has a place to shine. Scheerbart’s text is a lengthy love letter to glass, broken into 111 chapters, that range from the poetic to practical. He describes a vision of the world that is glowing, airy and colorful—one where we can breathe in the richness that life on Earth has to offer. Ulrich Conrads takes Scheerbart’s piece, boils it down to only six points, and creates a tight and comprehensive manifesto in his book, Programs and Manifestoes of 20th-century Architecture. Conrads’ preamble to the manifesto, introduces the writer as a predominant influence for the architect Bruno Taut, who refers to Scheerbart as “the only poet in architecture.”1 To this day one is not thought about without the other—their work is inextricably intertwined. Although written earlier, Scheerbart’s full text was published in 1914 by the journal Der Strum as an accompaniment piece to Taut’s Glass Pavilion during the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, Germany.2 Unlike the contributions of Peter Behrens, Henry van de Velde and Walter Gro-
pius, Taut’s structure was not formally included with the exhibition and instead was built along the route to the grounds.3 In 1851 when Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace opened for the first World’s Fair exhibition in London, it received mixed reviews—a positive reception from fairgoers and a negative one from architects. The difference of opinion is evidence of the long-standing discrepancy between what architects view as architecture and the vernacular. John Ruskin, a lover of stones, was one of the Crystal Palace’s harshest critics.4 In The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin delights in the quality of stones, likening them to jewels. He warns that one should “count its stones as you would jewels of a crown [...].”5 His praise of stone has very little to do with their aesthetic upon construction but is about their longevity and the quality they acquire with age. He cautions that “when we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone.”6 Additionally, Ruskin argues for the transparency of history and the honesty that unadulterated stone represents. He criticizes restoration in favor of slow decay. Scheerbart does not address the material qualities of glass over time but advocates for the literal and figurative transparency of the glass and the benefits it would have on our quality of life and in turn society. He argues that “our culture is in a sense a product of our architecture [and] if we wish to raise our culture to a higher level, we are forced for better or for worse to transform our architecture.”7 Essentially, living in enclosed brick spaces closes man off to the world but living in glass would open him up to it. Scheerbart is advocating for a change in architecture. This is the same kind of sentiment that helped architecture transition from the Neoclassical style to the Modern. Leading up to Taut’s Glass Pavilion, glass garners greater respect in the architectural world with Behrn’s
1. Paul Scheerbart, “Glass Architecture” in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, Conrads, ed., (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 32. 2. Paul Scheerbart, “Glass Architecture” in Conrads, ed., p. 32. 3. Erik Genoiu Lecture“Function and Evolution 1843-1976” Additionally, it is interesting to note that in the image captions in the Frampton text, Taut’s Glass Pavilion is listed as a structure in the Werkbund Exhibition. 4. Marrikka Trotter Lectures “Mountains and Minerals” and “Glass and the Power of Seeming” 5. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, p. 323 6. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, p. 42. 7. Paul Scheerbart, “Glass Architecture” in Conrads, ed., p. 32. 175
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seemingly monumental feat of glass appearing to hold up the structure of the AEG Turbine factory. Nikolaus Pevsner states that in this building “here for the first time the imaginative possibilities of industrial architecture were visualized. The result is a pure work of architecture, so finely balanced that the huge dimensions are scarcely realized [...].”8 Although Pevsner does not address Taut’s work directly, he talks about Taut’s contemporaries including Gropius and Meyer’s contribution to the Werkbund Exhibition. Pevsner’s exclusion of Taut is not an indication of any disdain for the Glass Pavilion but instead speaks to Taut’s independence from the prevailing lineages of master and student that Pevsner outlines throughout his text. He refers to the stair enclosed in a glass cylinder as “something sublime in this effortless mastery of material and weight.”9 Pevsner’s use of the world “sublime” mirrors Scheerbart’s ethereal descriptions of a world comprised of buildings made only of glass: “it would be as though the earth clad itself in jewelry of brilliants and enamel. The splendor is absolutely unimaginable. [...] Then we should have a paradise on Earth and would not need to gaze longingly at the paradise in the sky.”10 The search for a modern style of architecture, is not just the search for a consistent aesthetic that is a departure from the Neoclassical, but it is also the search for a material that transforms a building beyond its physical qualities and triggers an emotional response—it is the search for the sublime. In the industrial age, stone no longer has these qualities. Scheerbart’s manifesto approaches modernism from two fronts—style and material. Function is not part of the conversation because according to his viewpoint, glass architecture can and should be applied to all typologies. Glass as a material is indiscriminate. Not to mention that the possibilities of glass coupled with steel “are quite unlimited.”11 In Scheerbart’s full text he discusses the genesis of glass architecture in the Gothic style, stating that “glass architecture is unthinkable without Gothic” but during the height of the Gothic period, the full potential of glass was not realized “because
iron, the indispensable material, was not yet available, and this alone enables the totally glass room to be constructed.”12 Scheerbart is simultaneously lamenting about how the world could have been if steel had been invented earlier and expressing exuberance that the technology now exists to realize his vision. Sigfried Gideon describes the difference between machine production and handicraft, stating that “machine work means sterile design, precision,” whereas “handicraft has its own special charm that can never be replaced: the uniqueness of the product.”13 Gideon separates these into two different camps that do not mix together. However, Scheerbart and Taut have found a way to reconcile the two. Glass sits at the intersection between industry and handicraft because it can, and with its growing popularity needs to be mass produced, but it is customizable. Glass can be colored and curved and when the sun is shining it is completely transformed into something totally unique. Taut designed his Glass Pavilion to encompass the tenants put forth by Scheerbart, first in terms of aesthetics and then in terms of the greater cultural and societal impact that glass can have. Although, the Glass Pavilion is no longer standing, the following description along with one of the few black and white photographs of the interior, paint a clear picture of the experience of the space: [...] light that filtered through its faceted cupola and glass block walls to illuminate an axial seven-tiered chamber lined with glass mosaic. [T]his crystalline structure [...], had been designed in the spirit of a Gothic cathedral. It was in effect a Stadtkrone or “city crown,” that pyramidal form postulated by Taut as the universal paradigm of all religious building, which together with the faith it would inspire was an essential urban element for the restructuring of society.14
In one of the few surviving black and white
8. Sir Nikolaus Pevser, Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (New Haven & London: Yale University Press 2005), 204. 9. Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design, 216. 10. Paul Scheerbart, “Glass Architecture” in Conrads, ed., p. 32. Ironically, now we have a world that is covered in glass and light and people now actively, seek places that are completely dark so that they can appreciate the stars in the night sky. 11. Paul Scheerbart, “Glass Architecture” in Conrads, ed., p. 32. 12. Paul Scheerbart, The Gray Cloth: Paul Scheerbart’s Novel on Glass Architecture, John A. Stuart, trans. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 47. 13. Siegfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete, (Santa Monica: The Getty Center, 1995), 88. 176
HISTORY THEORY FIGURE #1: Interior of Taut’s Glass Pavilion at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne in 1914, Frampton.
photographs (fig. 1) the sense of the magnificent color is lost, however, the effect of the light reflecting and bouncing off the surfaces in the room is evident by two bright spots of light on the tiles on the right, a long band on the left, and small glints of brightness around the oculus. Taut does not pull only from Scheerbart’s incredible descriptions of the aesthetics of glass but also addresses the greater cultural and political elements of the text. Glass does not discriminate against typology or religion. Glass is the future; glass will end hate; glass is for everyone. Kenneth Frampton attributes On Glass Architecture and Taut’s Glass Pavilion as the catalyst for architectural expressionism in this time period. The two, coupled together, broke down the barrier for this type of “expressive” building to exist.15 Frampton traces Scheerbart’s influence on Hans Polzig, Erich Mendelsohn, Hugo Haring and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In fact Frampton refers to Mies van der Rohe as having a “Scheerbartian obsession,” one that is explored in his sketches for skyscrapers and then finally realized materially much later in the Seagram building.16 Scheerbart’s descriptions are so powerful 14. 15. 16. 17.
and compelling that fifty years after his text is published, architects are still trying to create his vision. Taut may not have come from a lineage of architects like Gropius but Taut and Scheerbart’s ideas end up having a legacy of their own. Scheerbart’s manifesto does not just wax poetic about glass and its sublime qualities, it addresses the practical elements as well. In his use of the word manufacture, Scheerbart is embracing the technology and industry of the era. The whole premise of his manifesto is that what glass has to offer, and the technology associated with its fabrication will propel the world into the future. Ruskin’s stones are of the past, they cannot glow and therefore are not on par with the heavenly. Although Scheerbart does not specifically, refer to Ruskin, his disdain for the “dreary” brick, the descendent of the stone is apparent.17 Perhaps it’s less about the quality of the glass that would transform the world but rather the contrast between brick and glass—the contrast from old to new— that will transform the earth and our lives.
Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992), 116. Ibid Frampton, Modern Architecture, 122. Paul Scheerbart, “Glass Architecture” in Conrads, ed., p. 33. 177
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ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM II Marrikka Trotter, TF: Liz Hirsch, Fall 2018 Ekphrasis: a careful, detailed visual description from which meaning is drawn. From the Greek for “out” and “speak”: a way to give images or objects a voice: to let them speak out. Choose one of the two provided images and perform a detailed, careful, and clear written description of what you see. Interpret the significance of what your description reveals. Your paper should build an argument that compellingly presents the creative interpretation your visual analysis has produced. --Architecture & Urbanism II Essay Assignment
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Transcendent Shading and the Suggestion of Another Place: Image 2 Ekphrasis
Centrally erected in front of the viewer, stands a towering structure comprised of and surrounded by rigid geometry. The composition of this image—broken up into equal thirds, both horizontally and vertically— serves as an invisible, yet strict, geometrical ordering system and also gives the tower prominence. The width of the tower occupies the central, vertical third and its height occupies the top two horizontal thirds. Beneath the tower, engulfing most of the foreground, a square slab rests in repose, rotated so that one corner projects out toward the viewer. The angle of the slab and the lines etched across it, drag the viewer’s eye across its surface to the plinth that anchors the tower to the ground. The use of shading attenuates the crisp linework and imbues the geometries with an ethereal lightness and seeping shadows.
As the slab rises from the ground, its right side
melts into the scene, toned with a light wash, whereas, the right side bears down on the ground covered in shadow. Two curves form an arc on the surface that is widest at the edges and narrows as it approaches the middle. The center of the arc oozes charcoal that dissipates as it spreads out. Tones on the slab alternate between dark and light. Seven straight lines rake across the skin of the slab, forming one point perspective lines. These lines, coupled with the darkness, weigh the image down and give the tower a firm ground to stand on. The slab serves as a preamble to the main event, allowing the eyes to meander in the foreground before moving up to the tower; allowing you to acclimate to the tonal duality present throughout the whole image. The tower is composed of two inverted cones— one inserted into the other, the bottom cone receives the pointed tip of the top one. Two wings jut out from the 179
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intersection point of the cones, extending in opposite directions. The wing behind the tower on the left drips with shadow, whereas, the wing on the right floats with the delicacy of glass. The shading on the latter transitions from dark at the top to a bright highlight, a reflection, at the bottom. Behind the transparent center of the wing, the spiral on the tower shimmers in and out of focus. A third of the tower hides in shadow and the rest glows from the shading. The tower appears to be occupiable. A ramp winds up from the center of the plinth to the right side of the tower, where the bottom of the black wing peers through a glass entrance. Thin horizontal lines, outlining fenestration, yield in the middle to make way for three vertical lines, or two doors. Even though the tower intends for occupation, there are no people in sight. In fact, the only organic life in the whole scene, floats at the bottom left corner of the page—a little palm tree. It was not drawn with the same rigor as the rest of the image; these lines droop and spring, they are imbued with life. Perhaps the tree describes a locale, a place with a tropical climate. However, the corner placement suggests an allusion to north arrows and scales on maps and architectural drawings. Additionally, the tower is ten palm trees tall. The whole of the metric system is derived from the number ten, therefore, this ratio of palm trees to tower cannot be happenstance. This tree serves to establish a scale and emphasize the enormity of the tower—the focal point of the image. A circular band nestles in between the wings, supporting the letters W and S, which orbit the top of the tower. Additional text hovers out of focus on the band in between these two letters. This text is not legible, and neither is the text at the middle and bottom of the tower. Triangular points touch the ring right behind the W and S, supporting it. A third point is distinctly visible counter-clockwise from the S and a fourth point is barely visible clockwise from the W. Based on their spacing, there are four points and four letters. Perhaps these letters are W, N, E, S, which, when read in a clockwise direction, are in the correct orientation for the cardinal directions. The high placement and clear delineation of these letters indicates the significance of direction for whoever, or whatever, occupies the image. The compass also symbolizes the choice between right and wrong, or lightness and dark. If they were intended to indicate the direction to the viewer, alone, they would be positioned in the corner of the page with the palm tree. Additionally, the use of the cardinal directions helps ground this strange world to 180
reality with recognizable symbolism. A palimpsest of erased pencil lines are visible throughout the image, but are most noticeable above the tower at the top edge of the page. The horizontal line stretches the width of the tower but not the plinth. A vertical line extends straight down from the midpoint acting as an extension of the central axis of the tower. Moving out from either side of the midpoint, each subsequent line is tilted a little bit more, with the line farthest to the left lining up with the left wing. These lines emanate from the top of the tower, reaching upwards. Further down the axis, at the precise center of the whole stands another notable symbol—a delicate arrow pointing upward, its tip eager to touch the point of the cone. The hand is also evident in creases on the left side of the page, which are not so much creases as crinkles; two wrinkly accidents that look like bolts of lightning flashing across the sky. Two sets of intentional lines reach across the page from the right side of the sky to the left; they cross each other and travel behind the tower. These lines lack the chaos of the aforementioned lightning bolts but still possess an atmospheric quality. The lines are cripest at their origin; as they move to the left the lines lighten and the shading trails off. These lines are light and airy—almost heavenly. One set of lines stretch toward the glare on the bottom of the wing. Light emanates from these lines on the right edge of the page, from the east—the sun is rising. Just as the image is broken up into thirds, the content is broken up into thirds as well. There is the place that the tower and the slab occupy here on earth now and the places beyond. Perhaps this scene serves as a liminal threshold between sunny firmament and a shadowy abyss, an allegory for heaven and hell. A solid black trapezoid surfaces from the ground near the palm tree. A single crisp line and a wider dark line melt into the ground, forming the slope that leads to a passageway underground. In line with the strict geometry in the composition, the tunnel unfurls straight beyond the perimeter wall towards the horizon—the only visible escape from the compound that encompasses the tower and the slab. Not a single drop of light penetrates the tunnel entrance. Perhaps the journey to perdition is not an inferno but instead a narrow, lightless corridor. Traveling along the straight rays in the sky with its
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body elongated and wings stretched, a small black figure flies away from here towards the source of the light. Alas, we have found another way out. A second figure is perched on the ground, equidistant from the tunnel and the edge of the light. This figure also has its wings outstretched, but it waits with static patience. At the precipice of a decision, this figure—which is neither a bird, nor a plane, but an angel—must choose a direction and make a choice between travelling on rays of light or sinking below the depths along a shadowy corridor. This place is the threshold between light and dark, good and bad, heaven and hell. This is limbo. Additionally, the bolts of lightning crack in the sky above the entrance to the tunnel. Both are on the left, sinister side of the page, where much of the scene is cast in shadow. Whereas the rays of light come from the right side of the page, soaking the image with layers of symbolism. Finally, above the horizon line, flanked between the bottom tips of the two wings, a small circle takes repose. It looks like a canon poking out of the hull of a ship, ready to strike. Half cloaked in shadow, it almost goes unnoticed, but once seen holds you in its relentless stare. As a pupil through a peephole—an omnipresent witness—it beholds the scene. Does it determine your fate forcing you on one of two paths, or as the compass suggests, is the decision your own? Regardless, the all knowing eye makes the viewer, who gazes upon an eerie and empty scene, shudder with the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
IMAGE #2: (Previous page) Image provided for by Marrikka Trotter and Liz Hirsch with no information about subject, artist, time, place or medium. 181
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ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM I Jia Gu, AT: Liz Hirsch, Spring 2018 A research paper about the Parthenon Marbles that were removed from their original site by Lord Elgin during the early 19th century and the question of ownership when it comes to monuments and works of art.
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Frieze, Lord Elgin! The Ongoing Struggle for the Repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles To this day, the Parthenon is an emblem of the power and magnificence of Ancient Greece. It stands atop the religious center of the city—the Acropolis, which literally translates to “upper city,” and looks out across all of Athens (fig. 1).1 The marbles that Britain’s Lord Elgin took from the Parthenon has spawned an exhaustive dispute between Great Britain and Greece, lasting over 200 years. Taken from their home in 1801, Lord Elgin sold them to British government, and then were acquired by the British Museum in 1817.2 Greece has been engaged in ongoing repatriation efforts to reclaim the marbles since 1833. Under the guise of protecting the marbles, Britain has refused to return them. As this issue has been drawn out questions about ownership and nationalism when it comes to ancient artifacts and monuments have risen, impacting preservation practices and modern relationships between countries. As a powerful symbol for the society that introduced the world to democracy and philosophy and inspired the revival of classical architecture, many Brits believe that they have just as much of a claim to the marbles as the Greeks do.3 Completed in 432 BCE, the Parthenon showcases the Greek’s architectural and artistic prowess. In fact, th uildings, including the British Museum (fig. 3), were built in neo-classical or Greek-revival styles inspired by it.4 The Parthenon is a hypostyle temple built for Athena, the patron of Athens. It is made up of doric columns, the first of the classical orders. Doric columns are considered the most masculine of the three column orders, which suits Athena because she is the goddess of wisdom, courage and strategic warfare.5
Rectangular in plan, the Parthenon is elevated on a platform called the stylobate and has a porch on the shorter east and west sides. The facades on those sides are topped with triangular-shaped pediments that house sculptures carved in the round. The pediments on the west facade feature sculptures of Athena and Poseidon and the east facade features statues of the birth of Athena from Zeus’ head. Below the pediments is a ribbon of continuous relief sculptures that wrap around all four facades called the frieze.7 It measures 160 meters long and a meter high and was viewed from below at a considerable distance— approximately 40 feet. There are 192 figures, not including all of the horses. Not just lauded for its architecture designed by Iktinos and Kallikrates, the Parthenon is praised for the beautifully carved reliefs and statues sculpted by Phidias.8 Even devoid of its ornamentation, sitting high above Athens, the Parthenon glows in the light of the setting sun. After 2450 years, the Parthenon is still an impressive example of Greek art and architecture. Whereas the sculptural imagery across the Parthenon depicts scenes from mythology and great battles, the frieze depicts an actual Athenian event—the Panathenaia. Every fours years a procession would walk up the Acropolis and around the Parthenon in celebration of Athena’s birth.9 The figures in the frieze can be seen carrying ritualistic items such as vases and the ceremonial robe that would get draped over the larger than life gold and ivory-clad statue of Athena that stands at the center of the temple.10 On the frieze the procession begins on the west facade. One group of figures branches off toward the north facade, the other toward the south and they meet up on the east facade.11
1. Martin Robertson, The Parthenon Frieze (New York: Oxford University Press in association with British Museum Publications Ltd., 1975), 3. 2. “The Parthenon Sculptures,” The British Museum, Last modified 2017. http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/state ments/parthenon_sculptures.aspx. 3. Debbie Challis “The Parthenon Sculptures: Emblems of British National Identity” The British Art Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2006), 33. 4. Robert Browning, The Parthenon in History from “The Elgin Marbles: Should they be returned to Greece?” (New York: Verso, 1997), 1. 5. Christopher Hitchens, The Elgin Marbles: Should they be returned to Greece? (New York: Verso, 1997), 19. 6. Ian Jenkins, The Parthenon Sculptures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 41. 7. Hitchens, Elgin Marbles,19. 8. Browning, Parthenon in History, 3. 9. Robertson, Parthenon Frieze, 4. 10. Jenkins, Parthenon Sculptures, 21. 11. Jenkins, Parthenon Sculptures, 35. 183
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Close up photographs of the friezes show the great care and detail involved in the carving. A rider’s tunic drapes delicately over the body of their horse, fingers are carved holding reins that would have been made of metal and the skin of bulls are wrinkling (fig. 5). However, the reliefs are not entirely accurate in terms of scale: the men and horses are the same height, a compositional choice in order to fill out the frieze evenly (fig. 4).12 The impressive skill and beauty imbued in the Parthenon sculptures is exemplified in the concluding statement in an 1816 Parliamentary report considering whether or not the government should purchase the marbles from Lord Elgin: [....] no country can be better adapted than our own to afford an honourable asylum to these monuments of the school of Pheidias, and the administration of Pericles; where, secure from further injury and degradation, they may receive that admiration and homage to which they are entitled, and serve in return as models and examples to those who, by knowing how to revere and appreciate them, may learn first to imitate, and ultimately to rival them.13 The marbles were so magnificent that the British government was eager to acquire the friezes, have their stylistic qualities imitated in modern works and then superseded. Built in 1823, just a few years after the acquisition of the Elgin marbles, the southern facade of the British Museum bears an uncanny resemblance to the Parthenon (fig.3).14 The museum’s entrance is made up of a central rectilinear building topped with a triangular pediment. It is flanked on either side by two more rectilinear buildings that extend out further than the central one. The colonnade of ionic columns circling the three parts of the entrance form a porch just like that of the Parthenon. There are no friezes along the top of the, perhaps to avoid detracting from the collection of friezes within. In addition to architecture directly inspired by the Parthenon and the classical Greek style there are several 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
buildings in London and Edinburgh that were adorned with copies of the friezes made from casts at the British Museum. In fact, in Debbie Challis’ article she goes as far as stating that the presence of the Parthenon marbles “fuelled the Greek Revival” in London and in turn helped cement as “emblems of British identity.”15 The friezes have undergone, arguably, more turmoil since being taken into Lord Elgin’s possession than the wars and bombings they endured while affixed to the Parthenon. In order to remove the friezes, Lord Elgin and his team had to saw them off the facade. Finally, the restoration and casting process did more to damage the friezes than save them. In the casting process that occured from 1835-1939 a corrosive lye soap was used as a releasing agent for the plaster.16 Joseph Duveen, a benefactor of the British Museum, proposed and undertook a restoration of the marbles to clean them up. Much of the paint on the marbles had rubbed off during transportation and the white marble took on a honey brown patina, and in some places was even orange and black.17 Duveen sought to return the marbles what he assumed was their “original” bright white glory-the stereotype propagated in Britain for what Classical architecture should look like. The acid used to clean the marbles not only removed the brown coloring but also removed the chisel marks from when it was originally carved by Phidias.18 Despite its detrimental results the British Museum touts the so-called success of the restoration process as a reason for why the marbles should stay in their current home, boasting that they “had not only saved the Elgin marbles, they had preserved them.”19 The British Museum, however, still maintains its position that the friezes are better off in their possession than if they were left in Athens. Comparisons of casts of the same frieze panel taken at different times are used to show how much damage is inflicted on the marbles at the Acropolis during a given spanse of time
Robertson, Frieze, 8. Challis, Emblems of British National Identity, 36. “Architecture,” The British Museum, last modified 2017, http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/the_museums_story/architecture.aspx Challis, Emblems of British National Identity, 36-37. Jenkins, Casts of the Parthenon, 90. St. Clair, Lord Elgin, 281. St. Clair, Lord Elgin, 342-345. St. Clair, Lord Elgin, 292. Jenkins, The Parthenon Sculptures, 32. 184
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(fig. 9).20 What the museum fails to mention when making these comparisons are the imperfections that may arise during the casting and mold making processes. Additionally, the casts from which the molds are made wear over time which is why a second set of casts had to be taken.21 So although, the cast of the frieze taken 70 years later is missing the head of the horsemen and the legs of the horse, these parts may not actually be missing at all. One of the main tenants underlying the philosophy of the British museum is their goal to “[illuminate] the histories of cultures for the benefit of future generations.”22 On the website for the British museum today, the following statement accompanies images and information about their collection of the Parthenon marbles: The sculptures in London, sometimes known as the ‘Elgin Marbles’, have been on permanent public display in the British Museum since 1817, free of charge. Here they are seen by a world audience and are actively studied and researched by an international community of scholars, to promote understanding both of ancient Greek culture and its role in the cultures of the world. The Museum has published the results of its own research extensively. New discoveries of ancient applied colour on the sculptures have been made with the application of special imaging technology.23 In this statement the museums seeks to reaffirm to the public their reasons for holding onto the marbles and not returning them to Athens despite multiple requests from Greece. In 1835 The British Museum proposed a trade of the casts of the Elgin marbles for casts of the marbles still at the Parthenon. The Greek government requested that the original marbles be returned to them instead. In 1864 when Britain transferred the sovereignty of the Ionian Islands to Greece they were hopeful that if Britain was volun-
tarily giving up territory then they would be willing to return the marbles. In 1997, Greece made yet another request that was denied.24 More recently in 2013, Greece has sought the help of UNESCO as a mediator. The British Museum’s first argument is that the marbles are on view for free in contrast to the Acropolis Museum that charges entry and therefore is accessible to a greater population. Even though access has been increased for anyone living in or around London, their location deprives native Greeks who cannot afford the travel to London from seeing them. The Ecole Des Beaux Arts was founded in 1816, the year before the marbles were obtained by the British Museum. Perhaps this statement harkens back to students of the Ecole studying and drawing Classical Architecture in the pursuit of their architecture education. At this time London would have been easier to get to from Paris than Athens. Finally, the statement implies that the British Museum is the best equipped to study and preserve the marble. This may have been true in the past but the new Acropolis Museum has been built with the intention of reclaiming and displaying the original marbles.26 The Acropolis Museum’s website is careful not to accuse the British Museum or incite a call for the repatriation of the marbles. However, in the description of the history of the museum a few phrases stand out as subtle nods to the current situation and the desire for the complete set of Parthenon marble to reside at the Acropolis. In a description of the fatal destruction from a Venetian caused explosion in 1687 no blame is placed on curious foreigners taking tiny pieces that were blown off as souvenirs. This behavior seems to be excused because the pieces were already separated from the building. However, when describing how the Elgin marbles found their way to London they say that “Lord Elgin removed intact architectural sculptures from the frieze, the metopes and the pediments of the building.”27 The distinction of the word “intact” serves to highlight Lord Elgin’s transgres-
21. Jenkins, Casts of the Parthenon, 118 22. Debbie Challis “The Parthenon Sculptures: Emblems of British National Identity” The British Art Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2006), 33-39. 23. “The Parthenon Sculptures,” The British Museum, last modified 2017, http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/statements/parthenon_sculptures.aspx 24. St. Clair, Lord Elgin, 333. 25. Patricia Van Gene-Saillet, ed. The reunification of the Parthenon Marbles: a European Concern, ( Bruxelles: Group Larcier, 2014), 29. 26. Jenkins, Casts of the Parthenon, 93. In the mid to late 1800s the caretaker for the Acropolis had to lock their remaining marbles underground to keep them safe from plundering and vandalism. 27. “Museum History,” The Acropolis Museum, Last modified 2017, http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/content/museum-history. 185
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sions. The second subtlety is where they finish describing the history of the museum, ending with the, “The new Museum offers all the amenities expected in an international museum of the 21st century.”28 Direct opposition to one of the British Museum’s main reason for holding onto the friezes—that they are better equipped to study and preserve the marbles over the Acropolis museum. The way the friezes are displayed at the Acropolis Museum is closer in representation to how they were displayed on the facades of the Parthenon (fig. 7). They wrap around the exterior of four sides of a rectangle, whereas at the British Museum they wrap around the interior of a rectangular gallery—the inverse of how they were meant to be experienced (fig. 6). At both museums the friezes are placed at eye level for ease of admiration despite them being visible only from below when they were affixed to the Parthenon.29 In light of 2013 Greek plea with UNESCO for mediation between them and the British Government on this issue the Swiss Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles organized a roundtable event where thirteen speeches were given by historians, professors, museum directors from different nations arguing for their return, illustrating how it is more than just a Greek issue and other’s support Greece in its endeavors.30 In the forward to a collection of articles from this round table, they authors state that “it is undeniable that now that the Greeks have a magnificent, state-of-the-art-museum at the foot of the Acropolis, waiting to reunite the treasures that adorned the Parthenon temple in their original geographical and cultural context, the British Museum can no longer justify the argument that they are better equipped to protect and exhibit the Marbles.”31 In one of the speeches the posturing of the claim for the return of the marbles was altered from the marbles returning to Greece for Greek nationalism to it being “a claim by the
mutilated monument itself.”32 Perhaps the anphropromorphization of the Parthenon will tug at the heartstrings of the British Museum, who under the leadership of the former Neil MacGregor the Director of the British museum shot down proposals to loan the Elgin marbles to the Acropolis museum.33 If the last 200 years are any indication, the British Museum and Government will not let go of the Elgin marbles easily. The means by which Lord Elgin obtained the marbles was deemed sufficient at the time. Despite the arguments the museum lays out for keeping the marbles, the dispute can be boiled down to a powerful nation denying a smaller, poorer nation what is rightfully theirs. Greece is struggling with bankruptcy and bailouts. To them the Elgin marbles are symbolic of one of the most powerful and innovative societies regaining its prominence in the modern world. Britain should return the Parthenon marbles to their original home. If not for Greek nationalism, and if not for the damaged caused to them during restoration attempts while housed at the British Museum, then for the Parthenon to be a unified monument again. When describing the new Acropolis Museum, Graham Binns delights in the phenomenological and historical experience of seeing the marbles from the Parthenon in the new Acropolis Museum and then walking “one of the old processional routes, to the rock itself [...making] a visit to the Acropolis the vision that it should be, rather than the scattered jigsaw that it has become.”34
28. “Museum History,” The Acropolis Museum. 29. The benefit of seeing architectural sculptures in their original orientation can be seen at the Opera Duomo Museum in Florence that is across the square from the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral. Before the facade of the Cathedral was remodeled in the 1400’s CE to its current presentation. Inside the museum the statues that adorned the facade prior to the remodel are displayed in a 1:1 replica of the original facade. There is something very magnificent about seeing the statues how they were seen over 600 years ago. Visitors are able to see the upper statues at eye level from the second floor balcony but first they are greeted with the monumental vantage point. 30. Van Gene-Saillet, Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, 13-14. 31. Ibid. 32. Van Gene-Saillet, Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, 29. 33. Van Gene-Saillet, Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, 29-30. 34. Graham Binns in Hitchens, Elgin Marbles,106. 186
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FIGURE #1: (Left)The Parthenon atop the Acropolis of Athens, National Geographic. FIGURE #9: (Above) Two plaster casts of the same frieze from the west facade of a horse and rider. The cast on the left was made in 1802 and the one on the right was made in 1872. This frieze remained affixed to the Parthenon until 1993, when it was pulled down and placed in the Acropolis Museum. This is another comparison used by the British Museum to show that Lord Elgin’s pillaging of the marbles was an act of rescue, Jenkins.
FIGURE #7: (Left) Eighty cast replicas of the Elgin friezes and fifty of the original friezes displayed at the Acropolis Museum. This image shows the friezes from the west and south facades. Displayed at eye level but in the correct orientation, Acropolis Museum. 187
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CONTEMPORARY THEORY Erik Ghenoiu, Fall 2017 Consider who and what compose architecture’s constituencies: from users to clients to the public to potentially nonhuman constituents, to different social classes and cultural groups who the architect or author might or might not consider, or who might have very different interactions with architecture’s products or with the ordinary environment. Then consider what responsibilities seem to be implied for the architectural product or process in relation to these constituencies. These might be cultural, economic, political, critical, or take other forms depending on the reading you select. --Contemporary Theory Essay Assignment
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The Ten to the One-Ten to the One-Oh-Five In Reyner Banham’s essay “Roadscape with Rusting Rails” there is no doubt that the author, a native Londoner, is a fan of 1960s Los Angeles. The essay reads as a defense for the city’s stereotypical malfeasances—traffic, smog, and freeways. Through the lens of commenting on his favorite automotive experiences in Los Angeles, he juxtaposes two social classes that are defined by transportation—those with cars and those without. In Los Angeles, architecture’s constituency is no longer the people but is now the automobile. There is a catch-22 in Watts that hinders the upward mobility of the residents. Banham notes that if the inhabitants “had cars, they might be able to drive the distances involved in getting to more lucrative jobs in other parts of the city, but without those jobs, they can’t afford the cars.”1 Architecture has been so eager to appeal to the automobile that it has ignored those without one, making it challenging for the commuters in Watts to quickly and easily travel to lucrative jobs. Unencumbered by a dense population of buildings, Los Angeles has the flexibility to build new freeways wherever it wants to.2 Banham hypothesizes that if a freeway were strategically placed to cut through the center of Watts, the fate of the neighborhood could change—it could once again become an important junction, like it was prior to 1961.3 This would alleviate the problems of social inequality by making it easier for the residents to get to better jobs and make enough money to afford cars. In his discussion of Watts, Banham argues that the automobile is not to blame for the class disparity in Los Angeles but it is a signifier for a problem that could easily be solved with thoughtful use of architecture.
ence is actually the one designed specifically for wealthy drivers on Wilshire Boulevard. According to Banham, the shop-lined street possesses “an aura of status, quality and respectability.”5 Parking in the back gives the driver a beautiful and unique view of the shops and there were window displays facing the street.6 Los Angeles architecture panders to car culture by building shops and experiences that are exclusively enjoyed by those in cars. The true architecture of Los Angeles is not made up of Modern homes or buildings in general but rather the infrastructure built solely for the automobile—freeways, wide shop-lined streets, parking lots, and garages. Banham does not blame the car for creating social disparity (even though it’s an easy “scape cart,”) he blames the poor placement of the freeways.7 Since architecture’s constituency is the automobile, it benefits from more cars on the road. Cars will be more accessible to the people of Watts and other less affluent areas if it becomes easier for the residents to get to the higher paying jobs across town. Banham is making the case that Los Angeles’ iconic architecture needs to be modified so as not to exclude the car less. Once that happens, then Los Angeles can live up to its potential as the ideal motorized city.
Banham enjoys whizzing around the city on the freeway ramps, calling the experience “the nearest thing to flight on four wheels” that he knows of.4 However, despite the enthusiastic way that he describes driving on the freeway, his favorite experi1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Reyner Banham, A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 125. Banham, A Critic Writes, 124. Banham, A Critic Writes, 126. Watts was left in the “middle of nowhere” after the last electric rail car was closed. Banham, A Critic Writes, 127. Banham, A Critic Writes, 128. Banham, A Critic Writes, 127. Ibid. 189
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CONTEMPORARY THEORY Erik Ghenoiu, Fall 2017 Consider what kinds of solutions or precedents are available for architecture’s use at all: formal, stylistic, programmatic, typological, rhetorical, and so on. These solutions might be works of architecture or they might be other things entirely. What does the reuse of an existing solution mean for architecture? How does the structure of a solution to one set of circumstances or problems change when applied to a different set? How might these circumstances be similar to one another, and how might they diverge in the context of the specific reading? --Contemporary Theory Essay Assignment
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The Hunchback of Architecture In the novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo attributes the invention of the printing press to the demise of art and architecture. Through his criticisms of architecture following the Gothic period, it is clear that Hugo is not a proponent of the use of precedent to design new buildings. For Hugo the overindulgent re-use of stylistic precedents turns architecture from artistic and intelligent practice into a copy machine, or printing press, that pops out replicas buildings. A copy of a successful piece of architecture cannot itself be successful because it is devoid of the essence that made the original a work of art. Ironically, Hugo blames the printing press for the demise of quality architecture, even though its invention makes it possible many copies of his book to get published and widely distributed. Once the book became more accessible and more people became literate, they no longer had to rely on the churches and the art in them to learn.1 Hugo laments that “architecture left to itself, abandoned by the other arts, because human thought has deserted it, must employ the artisan in default of the artist. Plain glass replaces stained glass; the stone mason, the sculptor.”2 In contrast to the artist who imbues life into art and architecture, the artisan is only capable of replicating and fabricating what already is.
increasingly more disdain for each iteration that follows, he likens these buildings to his eponymous character, describing them as “heavy, squat, top-heavy, laden down with a dome like a hump. Hugo’s diatribe is targeted at the modern stylistic period that is taking shape while he writes the book, whose roots go back as far as the Renaissance. The fervent reuse and copying of architecture is why many of the capitals in the United States mimic Greek buildings in order to imply Democracy.5 Hugo is very critical of this practice because it was not something that happened here and there but was manically happening all over Europe, trickled across the Atlantic, and persisted through time. One could argue that recreating a building of a style is akin working in that style but Hugo disagrees, stating that does not “express anything, not even the art of another time.”6 To him, the middle of the Renaissance through his present day are the true dark ages where art and architecture suffer and die. Society cannot move forward if it is only looking back to and trying to recreate the past; the future is about innovation. Perhaps Hugo would feel more at home in this century.
Hugo lauds Michelangelo’s work on Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome as the one successful use of precedent at the time. Aware of the state of architecture, he makes a last “despairing attempt to save [architecture]” by placing the Pantheon on top of the Parthenon.3 In this case Michelangelo takes two of the most well known feats of Roman and Greek architecture and combines them in a way to make something new and more stimulating and impressive than either of them alone. To Hugo, Saint Peter’s is a the last unique piece of architecture and its replica is a parody.4 With 1. Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” in Architectural Theory Volume I: An Anthology from Vitruvius to 1870, ed. Harry Francis Mallgrave, Blackwell (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), 356. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” 357. 5. I grew up in a Spanish style house that originally had Corinthian columns along the front. My parents quickly removed them but there were still one or two houses on the block that had a similar mutant façade. 6. Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” 356. 191
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ADVANCED PROJECT DELIVERY Pavel Getov & Kerenza Harris, Fall 2019 The course focuses on advanced methods of project delivery and construction documents incorporating digital technologies and investigating new models for linking design and construction processes. It introduces Building Information Modeling as one of the tools for realignment of the traditional relationships between the project stakeholders. Using a multi-unit residential building located in Los Angles, students will analyze and develop the architecture by creating a detailed 3D digital model and a set of 2D construction documents specifically tailored for the design challenges of a multi-unit residential project. --3GA Advanced Project Delivery Syllabus
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Mixed Use Residential Building Group Project with: Wesley Evans, Rob Sipchen, and Yuting Zhu
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RIGHT: Second floor plan of a mixed-use residential building on a 12,000 square foot lot in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood in Los Angeles, designed through the construction documents phase using Revit. The building includes an underground parking structure, a gallery and coffee shop, offices and five one-bedroom apartments. PREVIOUS SPREAD: Axonometric drawing that highlights the decorative feature wall made of customframed painted aluminum panesl that offers the building privacy from the street. Additionally, the building is ADA and zoning code compliant. 196
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WESLEY EVANS ZOE MALECKI ROBERT SIPCHEN YUTING ZHU
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960 EAST 3RD ST. LOS ANGELES, CA 90013
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1164 & 1170 ROBERTSON BLVD. LOS ANGELES, CA 90035
MR. THE OWNER 2
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LANDSCAPE SPECIALIST SAMUEL K. KIM, ASLA
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6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
STAIR 1 360 250 SF
359 71 SF
GEOTECHNICAL/SOILS ENGINEER STEVE S. TSAI, GE
Description
Date
1 A4.1 16
24' - 0"
200
FOYER 200
CLOSET
WA.4
464 SF
ø 5' - 0"
224 41 SF
201
RESTROOM 223 80 SF
220
221
4
220
OFFICE
221
225 480 SF
222
12.93°
223 224 225 226
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
1
SECOND FLOOR
N
A1.2
Q
3/16" = 1'-0"
197
ZOE MALECKI
FEATURE WALL
F
E.2
E
D
24' - 0"
24' - 0"
24' - 0"
30' - 0"
30' - 0"
3 A4.5 4 A4.5
POD 5
POD 4
BEDROOM 018 274 SF
PATIO 5
POD 3
BEDROOM
BEDROOM
017 275 SF
PATIO 4 331
336
670 SF
695 SF
830 SF
BATH 209 77 SF
DEN 026 186 SF
BATH 212 77 SF
019 274 SF
PATIO 3
330
DEN 025 182 SF
BATH
DEN
215 77 SF
024 182 SF
CURTAIN WALL
120
GALLERY AND COFFEE SHOP
R 105
101 2626 SF
PARKING 001 8534 SF 004
RIGHT: Longitudinal section drawing that cuts through the pods on the top floor, which houses the master suite in the five apartments. 198
ADVANCED PROJECT DELIVERY
C
B.8
B
A.5
24' - 0"
960 EAST 3RD ST. LOS ANGELES, CA 90013
A
WESLEY EVANS ZOE MALECKI ROBERT SIPCHEN YUTING ZHU
24' - 0" 30' - 0"
1 A4.3
POD 2
POD 1
MIXED USE RESIDENTIAL
SKYLIGHT ROOF PLAN 47' - 0 5/32"
ROOF BOTTOM 43' - 0"
BEDROOM
MR. THE OWNER
BEDROOM
020 274 SF
PATIO 2
1164 & 1170 ROBERTSON BLVD. LOS ANGELES, CA 90035
1164 ROBERTSON BLVD. LOS ANGELES, CA 90035
021 274 SF
PATIO 1 227
337 969 SF
1091 SF
THIRD FLOOR 32' - 0"
CONSULTANTS: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER KAL BENUSKA
BATH
DEN
BATH
DEN
218 77 SF
023 182 SF
221 77 SF
022 262 SF
CIVIL ENGINEER ALLEN AU, SE MEP ENGINEER BASSEM SAAB
SECOND FLOOR 16' - 0"
RAILING
RESTROOM F 113 237 SF
RESTROOM
HALL
LANDSCAPE SPECIALIST SAMUEL K. KIM, ASLA GEOTECHNICAL/SOILS ENGINEER STEVE S. TSAI, GE
No.
Description
Date
OFFICE
112
111
110
117 SF
213 SF
336 SF 111
FIRST FLOOR PLAN 0"
003
BASEMENT PLAN -15' - 0"
LONGITUDINAL SECTION
1
A4.2
LONGITUDINAL SECTION B 3/16" = 1'-0"
199
ZOE MALECKI
PARAPET CAP METAL FLASHING
METAL FLASHING ROOF PAVER CUSTOM METAL STAND
TOP PLATE 2% SLOPE DRAINAGE
WATERPROOFING
WATERPROOFING
RIGID INSULATION
ANCHOR ROD VAPOR BARRIER
2X6 WOOD STUD
RIGID INSULATION 7/8" STUCCO
GUTTER
BATT INSULATION CONCRETE ROOF
1/2" PLYWOOD SHEATHING
5/8" GYPSUM BOARD
CUSTOM CEILING PANEL
4
EXT. WALL TO 2ND FL ROOF CONNECTION 3" = 1'-0"
METAL CAP
FLASHING MEMBRANE RIGID INSULATION WATERPROOFING 7/8" STUCCO 2X8 STUD 1X3 STUD 2X6 STUD 5/8" GYPSUM BOARD
RIGHT: Four details of the roof and skylight elements. 200
2
SLOPING ROOF DETAIL 2 3" = 1'-0"
ADVANCED PROJECT DELIVERY
960 EAST 3RD ST. LOS ANGELES, CA 90013
ROOFING MEMBRANE VINYL GLAZING TAPE
WESLEY EVANS ZOE MALECKI ROBERT SIPCHEN YUTING ZHU
EXTRUDED ALUMINUM RETAINER CAP FRAME CONDENSATION GUTTER & WEEP HOLES
GLZAING FASTNER WATERPROOFING
MIXED USE RESIDENTIAL
METAL FLASHING
1164 & 1170 ROBERTSON BLVD. LOS ANGELES, CA 90035
RIDIG INSULATION 5/8" GYPSUM BOARD
MR. THE OWNER
2X8 WOOD STUD THERMAL INSULATION
1164 ROBERTSON BLVD. LOS ANGELES, CA 90035
1X3 WOOD STUD
CONSULTANTS:
N
3
SKYLIGHT DETAIL 3" = 1'-0"
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER KAL BENUSKA CIVIL ENGINEER ALLEN AU, SE MEP ENGINEER BASSEM SAAB LANDSCAPE SPECIALIST SAMUEL K. KIM, ASLA GEOTECHNICAL/SOILS ENGINEER STEVE S. TSAI, GE
+44' - 5 1/32"
TOP OF PARAPET
No.
Description
Date
MEMBRANE PARAPET CAP
WATERPROOFING TAPERED EDGE RIGID INSULATION 2X8 STUD 1/2" PLYWOOD SHEATHING ROOF BOTTOM 43' - 0"
2X6 STUD 1X3 STUD 7/8" STUCCO BATT INSULATION 5/8" GYPSUM BOARD
1
EXTERIOR DETAILS
A6.2
SLOPING ROOF DETAIL 1 3" = 1'-0"
201
ZOE MALECKI
202
VISUAL STUDIES II
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Herwig Baumgartner & Scott Uriu, Spring 2019 This course investigates issues related to the implementation of design: technology, the use of materials, systems integration, and the archetypal analytical strategies of force, order and character. The course includes a review of basic and advanced construction methods, analysis of building codes, the disgn of structural and mechanical systems, environmetal systems, buildings service systems. The inten of this course is to develop a chohesive understanding of how architects communicate complex building systems for the built environment and to demonstrate the ability to document an comprehensive architectural project and stewardship of the environment. --2GB Design Development Syllabus
203
ZOE MALECKI
Disney Animation Studios
Group Project with: Wesley Evans, Max Kochinke, Amanda Kotch Rish Saito, and Rob Sipchen
204
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
205
ZOE MALECKI
B-OFFICE
B-OFFICE
A1-THEATRE
A3-LOBBY A2-DINING
S2 - UNDERGROUND PARKING
5/8” SHEETROCK CORE GYPSUM
5/8” SHEETROCK CORE GYPSUM
5/8” SHEETROCK CORE GYPSUM
INSULATION
INSULATION
2 HR FIRE RESISTANCE FLOOR AND CEILING STEEL STUD
PLYWOOD INSULATION
1 HR FIRE RESISTANCE WALL
PREVIOUS SPREAD: Elevation showing the unitized, fritted glass facade system. Both a transparent and opaque frit pattern are used to let in more or less light depending on the programing of that area of the building. RIGHT: Fire seperation, construction type sheet. Shows the different occupency zones and their correspoinding construction type and required fire proofing, with 1, 2 and 4 hour fire reistanct walls and 2 and 4 hour fire resistant ceiling and floors. Additionally, a reflected ceiling plan showing the locations of sprinkler heads and their water spraying range. 206
2 HR FIRE RESISTANCE WALL
4 HR FIRE RESISTANCE WALL
4 HR FIRE RESISTANCE FLOOR AND CEILING
2” THICK FINISHED CONCRETE FLOOR
12” THICK REINFORCED CONCRETE SLAB ALUMINUM C CHANNEL ALUMINUM FURRING CHANEL 1 1/8” THICK GYPSUM BOARD DROPPED CEILING
1 1/8” THICK GYPSUM BOARDFACING PANEL 1/2” THICK GLASS SMOKE BAFFLE
FLOOR TO CEILING ASSEMBLY 4 HOUR FIRE RESISTANCE
SMOKE BAFFLE DETAIL
REFLECTED CEILING PLA
MAX 10’ DISTANCE BETWEEN
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
APPLIED STUDIES DESIGN DEVELOPMENT SPRING SEMESTER 4hr
4hr
4hr 4hr
4hr
4hr
B
4hr
4hr
2hr
INSTRUCTORS:
A1
2hr
2hr
B
4hr 2hr
4hr
A2
4hr
A3
HERWIG BAUMGARTNER SCOTT URIU
4hr
WARMRZ 345 PARK AVENUE SAN JOSE, CA 95110
4hr
4hr
WESLEY EVANS AMANDA KOTCH ZOE MALECKI MAXIMILIAN MARIA RYUSUKE SAITO ROBERT SIPCHEN CONSULTANTS: MATTHEW MELNYK JAMEY LYZUN
DISNEY OFFICES BURBANK, CA
CONSTRUCTION TYPE 1B
CONCRETE SHEETROCK CORE GYPSUM METAL FURRING CHANNEL
SHEETROCK CORE GYPSUM
G
CONCRETE SHEETROCK CORE GYPSUM ALUMINUM CHANNEL STEEL TRUSS SHEETROCK CORE GYPSUM CONCRETE
G TITLE: FIRE SEPARATION CONSTRUCTION TYPE
SCALE: NOT TO SCALE
DRAWING REVISIONS DESCRIPTION
DATE
1.
NO.
R. SIPCHEN
02/18/19
2.
R. SIPCHEN
02/25/19
3.
Z. MALECKI
03/04/19
4.
Z. MALECKI
03/11/19
5.
Z. MALECKI
04/08/19
SHEET NO. LINEAR LED FIXTURE LINEAR DIFFUSER SUPPLY AREA DIFFUSER RETURN AIR DIFFUSER CONCEALED FIRE SPRINKLERS
AN
N PENDANT SPRINKLER HEADS
207
A.10
ZOE MALECKI
PRIMARY STRUCTURE STEEL HSS 12x1/2”
LINEAR FEET 1378
CORES 12” DEEP FLOORS
CUBIC YARDS 9388.74 3162.96
$200/CY $200 $200
$1,877,748 $632,593
CURB
40.78
$200
$8,156
$200/CY
36” COLUMNS
CUBIC YARDS 76.93
CONCRETE
BASEMENT CONCRETE
TONS 45.11
$5000/TON $5000
TOTAL $432,279
$15,385 $852,089 $1,704,163
4,260.44 8,520.81
$200
18” RETAINING WALL
1,612.85
$200
$200
SECONDARY STRUCTURE STEEL
HS
HS
HS
$200
4’ MATT FOUNDATION
12” TRANSFER SLAB
$150/LF $150
HS HSS WELDING
$322,5770 $5,844,982.30
PREVIOUS SPREAD: Elevation showing the unitized, fritted glass facade system. Both a transparent and opaque frit pattern are used to let in more or less light depending on the programing of that area of the building. RIGHT: Construction cost estimation sheet. The building was broken into and priced out by five parts: primary structure, seconday structure, tertiary structure, finishes and glazing to estimate the hard cost of the building using industry standard rates. For 70,600 square feet at $1,872 per square foot, the total cost is over $132 million. 208
OTHER SYSTEMS MECHANICAL TERTIARY STRUCTURE FACADE
SPRINKLER $700/SF
UNITIZED GLASS SYSTEM
SQUARE FEET 13563 SQUARE FEET 135363
$100/SF
WELDING
TOTAL $94,754,100
FINISHES
CON $135,363,000 $108,290.400
GYP
SS 12x1/2”
SS 10x1/2”
SS 8x1/2” S 6x1/2”
APPLIED STUDIES DESIGN DEVELOPMENT SPRING SEMESTER
INSTRUCTORS: HERWIG BAUMGARTNER SCOTT URIU
WARMRZ 345 PARK AVENUE SAN JOSE, CA 95110
ENVELOPE UNROLL-CORE 1
WESLEY EVANS AMANDA KOTCH ZOE MALECKI MAXIMILIAN MARIA RYUSUKE SAITO ROBERT SIPCHEN CONSULTANTS: MATTHEW MELNYK JAMEY LYZUN
LINEAR FEET 1083
TONS 50.65
$5000/TON $5000
$150/LF $150
TOTAL $415,710
655 1745
21.44 44.3
$5000 $5000
$150 $150
$205,474 $483,278
11097
240.97 159.86
$150 $150
$2,869,407
10875
$5000 $5000
SQUARE FEET 70600
$50/SF $50
$2,430,563
DISNEY OFFICES BURBANK, CA
SS 18x1/2”
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
ENVELOPE UNROLL-CORE 2
TOTAL 3,530,000 $9,934,430
TITLE: CONSTRUCTION COST ESTIMATING
ENVELOPE UNROLL-CORE 3
SCALE: NOT TO SCALE
DRAWING REVISIONS NO.
DESCRIPTION Z. MALECKI
03/25/19
2.
Z. MALECKI
04/01/19
3.
Z. MALECKI
04/08/19
ENVELOPE UNROLL-CORE 4
SQUARE FEET 1378
$20-40/SF $30
TOTAL $2,118,000
SQUARE FEET 9388.74
$2-5/SF $3
$211,800
TOTAL PRIMARY
$5,844,982.30
NCRETE FLOOR
SQUARE FEET 70600
$80
$5,648,000
SECONDARY TERTIARY
$9,934,430 $108,290.400
PSUM BOARD WALLS
90000
$40
$112,500
ADDITIONAL
$8,090,300 $132,160,112
$/SF
$8,090,300
TOTAL SF
COST/SF
70,600
$1,872
209
DATE
1.
SHEET NO.
A.12
ZOE MALECKI
210
210
MATERIALS & TECTONICS Pavel Getov, Fall 2017 This class introduces students to fundamental tectonic principles with a strong emphasis on materials, material properties and industrial processes. This course is an investigation into the anatomy of material and its potential use in architecture. The goal of the class is to provide students with a thorough understanding of materials, and of the design methods, techniques, and industrial processes by which they acquire meaning in an architectural and building context. By means of direct testing and experimentation, the class explores technical and rational manipulations of traditional as well as novel materials, aiming to develop an understanding of their physical nature, environmental impact and possible reuse. --1GA Materials & Tectonics Syllabus
211
211
ZOE MALECKI LEFT: Powder printed model of the pendentive with its dome and arches. The model is oriented right side up and upside down to view both sides of the pendentive. RIGHT: Drawings of the pendentive and its transformation, followed by a diagram demonstrating how the new pieces form a ball and socket joint.
212
MATERIALS & TECTONICS
Pendentive Intervention
The pendentive was developed as a solution for placing a round dome ontop of a square building. Prior to its invention, one of the solutions was to place the dome on top of a round room that was inside of a square building as seen in Santa Costanza in Rome. Early forms of the pendentive can be seen in the 2nd and 3rd century at Villa Gordiani and Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa). The Byzantines perfected the pendentive in the 6th century with Hagia Sophia Cathedral (now a Mosque) in Istanbul. It is a prevalent feature of Byzantine architecture and was adopted for use elsewhere. The dome in Hagia Sophia has a diameter
of 102 feet and is 184 feet tall. Because of the pendentive, the dome is lofty and not obstructed by interior supports. The pendentive gets altered by shrinking it down, extruding the bases of each arch to make them longer, and filling in the arches to create a solid, yet hollow mass--a square-shaped channel. If you take two of these new pieces and invert the dome on one, the two pieces fit together (one dome inside of an inverted dome), creating two square channels that fit together by a dome-shaped joint. The joint and channels function similarly to an elbow. They will be made out of steel, instead of concrete or stone. 213
ZOE MALECKI BELOW: Plan, elevation and isometric studies of the diamond-shaped windows on the roof of the Leicester University Engineering Building—the focus of our project’s intervention. RIGHT: Drawing of the proposed intervention to the windows of the Leicester University Engineering Building, where the glass would be replaced with ETFE.
Construction began on Leicester University’s engineering building in 1959. Universities in the United Kingdom were going through a rapid expansion at this time. Freshly minted as a university, Leicester was interested in a different and more progressive looking building. Young architects, James Stirling and James Gowan received the commission through their contact with architect Sir Leslie Martin. The project was well received and was the first British building to gain mass acclaim since the Crystal Palace. Although Stirling often receives sole credit, Gowan was equally responsible for the design. Their partnership ended in 1963 shortly after the building was completed. The two architects worked closely with engineer Frank 214
Newby from the beginning of the project. Newby proposed that the windows be positioned at a 45 degree angle. Except for some functional input from the head of the department, Edward Parkes, the two had complete creative freedom. Stirling and Gowan sought to reject traditional approaches and reacted against the functionalism of contemporary architecture, making Leicester University’s engineering building the first Post- Modernist building in the U.K. Each building they designed was in a different style that reflected its use. Inspired by the shape of the site, they oriented the windows on roof at the same 45 degree angle. This
MATERIALS & TECTONICS
Leicester University Intervention
Group Project with: Wendy Guerrero and Joy Huang
orientation brings northern light into the workshop and laboratory space below. However, the shapes posed a challenge, requiring the design of an innovative frame made up of rectangular and diamond shapes. The skylights are composed of 2,500 unique glass panels-translucent ply-glass with an inner layer of fiberglass and opaque glass coated with aluminum. Students nicknamed the building the “Fairy Palace” because of how the windows on the roof glowed at night. In 2015 major preservation work began to replace the skylights with better performing modern materials. Thicker glass with a better weather-tight seal was used. The two-year renovation project was done to improve the building’s functionality, while maintaining
Stirling and Gowan’s iconic design. Considering, the weight and weatherproofing issues with the existing skylights, we propose replacing the glass with ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). The lightweight material would be filled with air to form rigid pillows. Air flow in the ETFE can be adjusted to keep the weather-tight seal intact depending on changes in temperature. Four pillows will come together in a diamond shape, mirroring the original design. However, the shape of the pillows makes the form more voluptuous--a quiet nod to Stirling’s reputation as a prolific womanizer.
215