Miranda Shugars | 2016
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cover: The Life of Architecture, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, 2013.
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MIRANDA SHUGARS 511 W 113th St. Apt. 31 New York, NY 10025 +1 (601) 618-9096 miranda.shugars@gmail.com skype: m_shugars
EDUCATION 2014-2017 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY | Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, Preservation New York Masters of Architecture I, expected graduation May 2018 Activities: A-Frame (challenges norms through panels, publications, and seminars) 2010-2014 HARVARD COLLEGE Cambridge Bachelor of Arts in Visual and Environmental Studies minor in History of Art and Architecture, citation in Spanish Activities: Harvard Independent, Harvard Sq. Homeless Shelter, H Bomb magazine
EXPERIENCE June-Aug 2016 2016 ISTANBUL DESIGN BIENNIAL | Research and Design New York Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina Point team for the “Unstable Body” and “Control Room” exhibits. Research of historic and current prosthetics, microbiology, and data visualizations Synthesizing relevant literature to propose philosophical and aesthetic direction Testing suitable equipment and drawing technical specifications for installations Working with global team of artists and designers through weekly progress binders 2015-2016 ADMINISTRATIVE TEACHING ASSISTANT | Columbia University New York Craig Schwitter Design and build of TECH course work installation for 2016 End of Year Show Constructing display tables, soliciting student work, compiling course work books Creating TECH website to centralize online information and student work archive 2014-2016 TEACHING ASSISTANT | Columbia University New York Jyoti Hosagrahar | Gwendolyn Wright Courses: “Global, Local, Post-colonial”, “History of the American City”, and “Modern Housing” Communicating conflicts, expectations, and scheduling with students and professor Collecting and compiling student work into standardized final report books Researching post-colonial theory for updated readings and architectural examples Jan-May 2016 ARTHUR ROSS GALLERY | Exhibition Fabrication | Columbia University New York Exhibitions: Les Levine and Rifat Chadirii CNC milling acrylic and steel fittings, hanging and leveling photos across 40’ gallery Flame polishing and finishing large acrylic sheets for presentation cases
PUBLICATIONS February 2016 New York 2010-2014 Cambridge
DIGITAL SKILLS LANGUAGES
A-FRAME | Graphic Designer and Researcher
Content research and graphic design for “The Entrepreneurship Question” pamphlet
THE HARVARD INDEPENDENT | Production Manager
Layout editor, cover designer, and contributor to weekly issues for three years Revitalized InDesign templates, designed column logos and thematic motifs
Adobe Suite (6 yrs), ArcGIS (2yrs), AutoCad (2 yrs), Revit (1 yr), Rhino (2 yrs) Avid (1yr), Final Cut Pro (1 yr), Microsoft Office Suite (10 yrs) Spanish (conversational), Latin (reading), Russian (basic), German (basic) Programming: Arduino, C++, CSS, HTML, PHP, Ruby, SQL (basic) | 3
Bird-like, the cars’ lights dash across the room again and again. We can pretend, we mistake, at first, light for bird. We notice the spot of white arc through the sunny room leaving nothing. From time to time birds will build nests inside these rooms, but never fly twice across, silent.
Waking up We all know it’s going to happen. But it’s never exactly how, and if it’s exactly how, not exactly when. It’s like the conversation planned word by word the night before. Partway through she stops you “Wait, what was that?” Or it’s just the expression you can’t anticipate do eyes, do jaws really move like that. It’s the knack of being like water, of letting go as easily as holding on with all ten fingers and both arms. 4 |
CONTENTS
Central Park Labyrinth
6
urban farm / cemetery maintained by at-risk youth
Avian Ecological Park
16
water treatment plant for endangered birds and humans
Core of Housing
22
socially- and urbanistically- oriented apartment complex
Light Box/ Black Box
32
black box theater in NYC’s underserved Redhook area
After Party
38
built enclosure for quiet reflection during an open-house
Ladder Out of Time
40
video of the life of an object taken out of time
Peep Show
42
installation challenging voyeurism and intimacy
Prison Lights
44
series of photographs that explore the light of prison
Portraits
46
collection exploring the intangible characteristics of faces
The Invisible Coast
48
photojournalism of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi
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Columbia | Spring 2016
from ridge, looking across central lake
CENTRAL PARK LABYRINTH Critic: Karla Rothstein Spring 2016 Location: Central Park, New York City Brief: Cemetery Size: 102 acres
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Central Park’s reservoir, as large as a cemetery, sits placidly reflecting the condition of New York City, anchoring it in a past of exclusivity. The proposed Labyrinth reallocates this land to two deliberately unseen populations of New York: juvenile offenders and the dead. The space of the reservoir turns from past to future, and Central Park embraces its potential to facilitate social progress. The space of the reservoir becomes a labyrinthine, terraced urban farm fed from a central disposition pool and higher surrounding retaining pools.
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Columbia | Spring 2016
CONDITIONS OF NEW YORK CITY Cemeteries in the New York area are overcrowded, and fill up quickly. Today, only a few cemeteries in New York City still have space for new burials, and these are expensive options. North of Manhattan is Hart Island, the largest publically-funded cemetery in the world. Hart Island’s mass trenches have historically interred soldiers, psychiatric patients, and victims of epidemics, and today continues to accept those unwanted, unclaimed, or unable to afford a cemetery plot. Hart Island’s custodians are mostly inmates from nearby Riker’s Island prison: New York’s unwanted burying the unwanted in an unseen place. New York’s current youth penal system is in need of modification. In April 2014, governor Cuomo appointed a commission to identify potential improvements to the state’s juvenile delinquent procedures. The commission concluded unanimously that community-based outreach and counseling centers decrease recidivism rates over
Cemetery, population, density per grave plot 1. Trinity (10.000 , 2.23) 2. Woodlawn (300.000, 7.52) 3. Marble (2.080, 3.46) 4. Mt Hebron / Cedar Grove (256.000, 7.85) 5. St. Michael’s (40.000, 3.96) 6. New Calvery (3.000.000, 4.86) 7. Mount Zion (210.000, 5.45) 8. St. John’s (300.000, 7.59) 9. Hart (1.200.000, 10.14) 10. Saint Raymond’s (500.000, 6.76) 11. Lutheran / Olivet (200.000, 7.11) 12. Green-Wood (560.000, 7.46) 13. Washington (300.000, 9.93) 14. Holy Cross (150.000, 8.21) 15. Cypress Hills (150.000, 7.1) 16. Pallisaides Cemeteries (100.000, 2.5)
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detention, and offer a host of potential benefits to the young people involved. Rather than removing them to often distant facilities, endeavoring to keep the youth at home and offer resources to them and their families can address the underlying issues of instability, hopelessness, and lack of alternatives that drive delinquency. With government backing, the re-formed cemetery can invert the model of Hart Island by offering these at-risk youth the opportunity for ownership of sacred space. Berkshire Farm, one of the oldest and largest private youth services facilities in the state, has proven the benefits of vocational training coupled with family outreach for high school aged delinquents, but the youth outreach facilities in the Manhattan area do not yet offer this kind of program. The reformed cemetery in Central Park could offer vocational horticultural training as part of a comprehensive alternative to juvenile detention or punishment, positioning the youth as caretakers and benefactors of the fertile 106-acres of cultivatable land. The cemetery itself would grow and respond to the subsequent generations of customers and caretakers to suit the needs of the diverse populations.
Existing: separation of the dead, the incarcerated, and the others.
Proposed: unifying space for productive, therapeutic interaction. | 9
Columbia | Spring 2016
GEOMETRY OF BURIAL labyrinth method bodies 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 interment method
5,000
years
1
2
current interment burial: 4’ x 10’ plot x 250,000 sq ft = 6,000 total burials
bodies moving through labyrinth path of dead paths of living
constituents moving through labyrinth
BODIES/ WATER
existing running path extended labyrinth non-directed wandering entrance points purposeful direction
CONSTITUENTS
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3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
proposed burial through alkaline hydrolysis (water cremation): 450 pods x 8 weeks per burial = 3,000 annual burials
access road central pool disposition cavities youth outreach center memorial garden high ground
medium ground low ground retaining pools
250ft
125ft
50ft
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Columbia | Spring 2016
LIFE AFTER DEATH The central disposition pool slowly transforms the dead into effluent, which is redistributed as fertilizer. By converting the reservoir into a site of natural resumation, the bodies of loved ones gradually return to their constituent nutrients, in which form they pass and into an ever-growing, densifying, and living city of plants and pools, joining the masses of New York, living and dead, in a fertile celebration of material and vital cycles. These structures of decay and growth constantly mutate chemically and ecologically, to form a daily and annually shifting landscape.
looking across retaining pools into fields
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The crops of the farmland are irrigated through a gravity-driven system enabled by the gentle, regular slope of the labyrinth. By coiling the space of the reservoir into an 8-mile track, it becomes accessible for long, meditative walks or scenic, extended runs.
full irrigation path
water storage
radial crop plot lines
onion garlic leek carrot celery parsnips lettuce sunflower cabbage broccoli brussels sprouts kale spinach beets chard cucumber melon squash gourds peas beans corn wheat oats rye tomatoes peppers eggplant potatoes crop type distribution
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Columbia | Spring 2016
existing Central Park, proposed labyrinth 14 |
view across the central pool
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Columbia | Spring 2016
Current Site: encroaching urban development
AVIAN ECOLOGICAL PARK Architectural Technology V Spring 2016 Team: Troy Lacombe, Violet Whitney, Da Ying Location: Arverne East, New York City Brief: Campus Size: 80 acres
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The Arverne East Avian Ecological Park is a center for learning, research, and environmental management that will revitalize habitat for endangered bird populations and re-connect the academic network of New York City to natural systems and human consequences. A strip of raised park collects and processes wastewater through bioswales and facultative lagoons, while providing a safe vantage point for the local population to observe these processes and the avian habitat beyond, and insulating the park from the elevated subway line. This provides an outdoor, interactive learning environment for the many nearby families and elementary schools.
Proposed Site: new ecosystem by water filtration through site
Far Rockaway has been identified by the Audubon Society as part of a critical ecological thoroughfare called the Atlantic Flyway, which hosts millions of birds migrating from as far as Canada to South America. It’s disappearing. As intensifying storms and rising ocean levels erode its shoreline, both animal and human populations suffer from waters and soils polluted by unsustainable energy and urban waste systems.
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Columbia | Spring 2016
WATER TREATMENT CENTER
ELEVATED PARKSCAPE
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PLANT IN OPERATION: DESIGN CAPACITY: DEWATERING: POPULATION SERVED: RECEIVING WATERBODY: DRAINAGE AREA:
2030 1 MGD 26TH WARD WWTP 1,800 AVIAN PARK WETLAND 125 ACRES, ARVERNE EAST
Introducing a new water treatment plant to this site could replace the existing Far Rockaway plant, which routinely polutes the nearby ocean. In addition to encouraging growth of bird population, the waterwater and stormwater treatment plant could rehabilitate fish and oyster populations which were once plentiful in this area.
SEWAGE LINE STORM WATER
500ft
250ft
100ft
The water treatment plant would help to create the desired ecosystems. The controlled salination of dumped water would feed wetlands and brackish marsh, which would provide habitat for the shorebirds and their food sources. Additionally, the facultative lagoons of the passive water treatment system and their surrounding platform allow for a scenic raised parkscape from which to safely observe the migratory bird populations. The park would benefit local families and bird enthusiasts alike.
500ft
250ft
100ft
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Columbia | Spring 2016
HABITATS
In this project, we are primarily concerned with four species of local shorebirds identified by the New York Audobon Society as most at-risk due to loss of habitat: the Piping Plover, Roseate Turn, Saltmarsh Sparrow, and American Oyster Catcher.
To facilitate these species and their food sources, we have identified five habitat types that will striate our site. Though the striations would be more intricate than those shown here, we have located broad swaths to demonstrate a general gradient.
Sand Wetland Maritime Dunes Maritime Beach Shrubland
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Shrubland
Wetland
Maritime Beach
Maritime Dunes
Sand
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Columbia | Fall 2016
apartment open to itself and to Grand Concourse
CORE OF HOUSING Critic: Eric Bunge Fall 2016 Team: Eric Li Location: Mott Haven, New York City Brief: Housing Size: 330,000 sq. ft.
22 |
Apartments open themselves and integrate domestic life with commercial life, fostering community by remaining semi-public rather than sequestering their residents in locked rooms off of dark interior hallways. The spaces of the apartment range from commercially public towers, to shared communal gardens and amenities, to shared private kitchens and living rooms, to the “core� private bedrooms and bathrooms.
CONCEPT STRATEGY: raising the street to connect to city
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Columbia | Fall 2016
CORE: intimate spaces, bathrooms, bedrooms, storage
PORCH: communal spaces, kitchens, living rooms, option spaces
STREET: shared spaces, circulation, gardens, connection to city
24 |
Single Height Floor Plans: Clusters
Double Height Floor Plans: LV. 1
Double Height Floor Plans: LV. 2
50ft
25ft
10ft
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Columbia | Fall 2016
Sprefeld shared chases and common spaces
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NEW YORK CITY CHRONOLOGY OF UNITS
New York apartments have changed over time, becoming more standardized in terms of room size and layout. As minimal room size regulations have become stricter, rent on affordable as well as luxury units has skyrocketed exponentially.
As an alternative model, the Sprefeld apartments in Berlin allocate copious room to “option spaces�, whose programs are determined by resident agreement.
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Columbia | Fall 2016
concentration of single parent households
concentration of two-parent households 28 |
The Mott Haven neighborhood has a high concentration of single-parent households, as well as student populations attracted by nearby colleges. To serve the area, the Core of Housing apartment complex is designed to minimize rent costs and maximize community engagement.
droom )
ADA Cluster
per cluster ft. core/ unit
2 units per cluster 239 sq. ft. core/unit
The units for the Core of Housing apartments shrink the private “core� spaces, while allocating more space to communal amenities. By pooling square footage requirements, the apartments keep rent low.
Studio Cluster students, couples
ADA, elderly
4 units per cluster 207 sq. ft. core/unit 128 units
32 units
Two Bedroom (Public)
ADA Cluster 2 units per cluster 503 sq. ft. core/ unit 2 units per cluster 239 sq. ft. core/ 64unit units
Studio Cluster
32 units
128 units
4 units per cluster 207 sq. ft. core/ unit
ADA Cluster
2 units per clu 239 sq. ft. cor Two Bedroom (Private)
Two Bedroom 32 (Public)
larger families
smaller families
2 units per cluster 733 sq. ft. core/unit
2 units per cluster 503 sq. ft. core/unit
32 units
64 units
units
Two Bedroom (Private) 2 units per cluster 733 sq. ft. core/ unit 32 units
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Columbia | Fall 2016
30 |
horizontal connections with sky and street datums, outdoor walkways and shared balconies
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Columbia | Fall 2016
LIGHT BOX / BLACK BOX Architectural Technology IV Fall 2016 Team: Rick Fudge, Troy Lacombe, Julie Pedtke Location: Redhook, New York City Brief: Theater Size: 60,000 sq. ft. 32 |
This blackbox community theater design sought to address the unique social and topographical needs of the Redhook neighborhood, which has a highly creative younger population, and sits four feet below the flood plane. Part of our aesthetic scheme involved exposed systems, which allowed us to visually combine our mechanical plans and RCPs. As the primary MEP designer, I devised a system that naturally ventilated through the stack effects of double-height spaces when possible, using the low-level introduction of heat through in-slab PEX tubing.
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Columbia | Fall 2016 2
3
4
4.7
5
7
6
1
8
31' - 8 15/16"
31' - 8 15/16"
30' - 8 7/16"
36' - 11 3/32"
35' - 9 13/32"
1.2
2
OT
242' - 11 9/32" 45' - 8"
W1
3
4
4.7
31' - 8 15/16"
31' - 8 15/16"
36' - 11 3/32"
8
35' - 9 13/32"
OT
45' - 8"
A
W1
W2
1 A501
A501
DN
7
6
30' - 8 7/16"
2 A201
W2
1
5
242' - 11 9/32" 30' - 4 7/16"
ARCHITECTS
2 A201
A
UP
A
UP DN
DN
UP
A.3
23' - 8 7/8"
DN
Sound / Light Lock
A.8
Balcony Seating
P1
23' - 4 5/8"
1 A201
Waiting Lounge
Lobby
B.5 B.7
A501
B.5
A.8 B
Entrance
DN
Box Office
1 A201
4
B.7
4
Bar / Cafe
C
A501
C
Elevator Mechanical W.C.
23' - 11"
Service
A.3
Auditorium
B
Waiting Lounge
23' - 8 7/8"
UP
DN
23' - 4 5/8"
30' - 4 7/16"
W.C.
DN
23' - 11"
1 1.2
Private Entrance
Admin
DN
No.
UP
Description
Date
No.
UP
D
Desc
D Stage Area 23' - 11"
23' - 11"
P1
A501
E
P1
5 A501
E.7
E.7
F
F
F.2
Loading Dock
30' - 1 9/16"
Production Office
SUMMIT ST. THEA
Workshop
G
PLAN 02
Mechanical
DN
Drawn By Checked By
A102
Scale
Level 2 3/32" = 1'-0"
1
PLAN 1
3/32" = 1'-0" Level 1
3/32" = 1'-0"
DN
Costume Shop
Project Number Date
DN
Utilities
Electrical
12/14/2015 7:37:48 PM
Date
N
PLA
P2
AT4 Issue Date Author Checker
Project Number
H
THE W
31' - 7 9/16"
31' - 7 9/16"
Dressing Rooms
SUMMIT ST. BLACK BOX THEATRE
G
1 1.2
F.2
6 A501
THE WHALE
DN
30' - 1 9/16"
UP
1
E
23' - 11"
23' - 11"
A501
180' - 7 5/8"
2
180' - 7 5/8"
2 A501
5
UP
Generator Tank
Drawn By
H
Checked By
A1
N
Scale
PLAN 2 2
3
4
4.7
5
7
6
1 1.2
8
2
3
4
4.7
31' - 8 15/16"
31' - 8 15/16"
30' - 8 7/16"
36' - 11 3/32"
35' - 9 13/32"
45' - 8"
30' - 4 7/16"
OT
W1
1
31' - 8 15/16"
31' - 8 15/16"
30' - 8 7/16"
7
6 36' - 11 3/32"
8
35' - 9 13/32"
OT
45' - 8"
A
ARCHITECTS
2 A201
5
242' - 11 9/32"
242' - 11 9/32" 30' - 4 7/16"
2 A201
A501
A
DN
Recording Studio
W2
A.3
23' - 8 7/8"
UP
A
Outdoor Seating
A.8
Mechanical
A.3
23' - 8 7/8"
Recording Studio
A.8
B
B
Catwalks
B.5 B.7
A201
DN
P1
4 A501
1 A201
Bar
23' - 11"
C
B.5 B.7 C
23' - 11"
1
23' - 4 5/8"
Restaurant
Control
23' - 4 5/8"
Control
Kitchen
DN
DN
P1 UP
No.
Description
Date
E.7
F
DN
F
F.2
F.2
SUMMIT ST. BLACK BOX THEATRE
G
PLAN
Drawn By Checked By
N
Scale
A103 1
PLAN 3
Level 4 3/32" = 1'-0"
30' - 1 9/16"
AT4 Issue Date Author Checker
3/32" = 1'-0"
Project Number Date
H 12/14/2015 7:37:56 PM
30' - 1 9/16"
Date
SUMMIT ST. THEA
G
PLAN 03 Project Number
H
THE W
31' - 7 9/16"
31' - 7 9/16"
THE WHALE
Level 3 1 3/32" = 1'-0"
E
23' - 11"
E.7
Drawn By Checked By
2
3
4
A1
N
Scale
PLAN 4
1 1.2
Descr
23' - 11" 180' - 7 5/8"
180' - 7 5/8"
E
23' - 11"
5 A501
No.
D
23' - 11"
D
2 A501
OT
4.7 5
6
7
8
242' - 11 9/32" 30' - 4 7/16"
31' - 8 15/16"
31' - 8 15/16"
30' - 8 7/16"
36' - 11 3/32"
35' - 9 13/32"
45' - 8"
T. O. PARAPET 60' - 0"
T.O. RAILING 48' - 6" Level 4 44' - 0"
Level 3 34' - 0"
Level 2 19' - 0"
Level 1 4' - 0" GROUND LEVEL 0' - 0"
1
No.
Section E-W 3/32" = 1'-0"
A
B A.3
23' - 8 7/8"
C
D
E
E.7
F F.2
G
H
180' - 7 5/8" 23' - 4 5/8"
23' - 11"
23' - 11"
23' - 11"
31' - 7 9/16"
30' - 1 9/16"
T. O. PARAPET 60' - 0"
T.O. RAILING 48' - 6" Level 4 44' - 0"
THE
Level 3 34' - 0"
SUMMIT T Level 2 19' - 0"
Level 1 4' - 0" GROUND LEVEL 0' - 0"
SECTION
SE Project Number Date Drawn By
34 |
Checked By
2
Section N-S 3/32" = 1'-0"
A
1 1.2
2
3
4
4.7 5
7
6
8
OT
242'-11 9/32" 30'-4 7/16"
31'-8 15/16"
31'-8 15/16"
30'-8 7/16"
36'-11 3/32"
35'-9 13/32"
45'-8"
A
23'-8 7/8" 23'-4 5/8"
A A.3
B.5
A.8 B
B.7
23'-11"
C
23'-11"
D
180'-7 5/8"
Due to the restrictions of the flood level, the air circulation systems were located primarily on the second and third levels, and introduced at the higher levels of spaces. The main auditorium, a three-story 30,000sqft space, also required an emergency smoke removal system, which was achieved by enabling the primary input and output ducts to be reversible.
23'-11"
E
E.7 F
THE W
31'-7 9/16"
F.2
SUMMIT ST. THEA
RCP
30'-1 9/16"
G
Project Number Date Drawn By Checked By
A4
H
1
Scale
Level 1 3/32" = 1'-0"
RCP 1 1 1.2
2
3
4
4.7 5
7
6
8
OT
242'-11 9/32" 30'-4 7/16"
31'-8 15/16"
31'-8 15/16"
30'-8 7/16"
36'-11 3/32"
35'-9 13/32"
45'-8"
ARCH
A
23'-8 7/8"
A.3 A.8 B
23'-4 5/8"
B.5 B.7
23'-11"
C
180'-7 5/8"
23'-11"
D
23'-11"
E
E.7 F
THE WH
31'-7 9/16"
F.2
SUMMIT ST. BL THEATR
RCP 0
30'-1 9/16"
G
Project Number Date Drawn By Checked By
A40
H
RCP 2 1
Scale
Level 2 3/32" = 1'-0"
1 1.2
2
3
4
4.7 5
7
6
1 1.2
2
3
8
4
242' - 11 9/32" 36' - 11 3/32"
35' - 9 13/32"
45' - 8"
30'-4 7/16"
31'-8 15/16"
31'-8 15/16"
OT
4.7 5
7
6
8
OT
242'-11 9/32" 30'-8 7/16" ARCHITECTS
36'-11 3/32"
35'-9 13/32"
45'-8"
A
A A.3
A.3
B
B
B.5 B.7
B.5
23'-8 7/8"
30' - 8 7/16"
A.8
A.8
23'-4 5/8"
31' - 8 15/16"
23' - 8 7/8"
31' - 8 15/16"
23' - 4 5/8"
30' - 4 7/16"
B.7
C
23'-11"
23' - 11"
C
D
23'-11" 180'-7 5/8"
E
E
23' - 11"
180' - 7 5/8"
23' - 11"
D
23'-11"
E.7
E.7
F
THE WHALE
F.2
THE W
31'-7 9/16"
31' - 7 9/16"
RCP 4
SUMMIT ST THE
RCP 03
G
RC
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Project Number Date Drawn By Checked By
AT4 Issue Date TL, JP, MS, RF A, A, R
30'-1 9/16"
G
30' - 1 9/16"
RCP 3
F F.2
SUMMIT ST. BLACK BOX THEATRE
Project Number Date
Harvard | Fall 2011 2013
lantern illuminating fountain glass and water
lantern behind fountain
AFTER PARTY Fall 2013 Installation pine, plywood, glass, wire mesh, fabric, arduino
36 |
arduino sonic sensor and lantern test
Proximity-sensitive arduino-programmed lanterns illuminate a cordoned-off room, a meditative space composed of Southern yellow pine furniture, scraps, and shavings, including a knock-apart bench and four-foot glass-panel fountain. The room was a carefully choreographed experience, from the mirrored approach and entrance, dimness of the room, ebb and flow of light and sound, to the scraping of the leaf-like wood shavings gathered in the corners. In the hubub of the crowded art exhibition, the room provided a space for quiet reflection, where many visitors lingered. Compared with the vibrancy of the surrounding party, the After Party reflected on the transience for these experiences.
from behind mesh sculpture: bench, fountain, and exit
from exit, first lantern and wood shavings
details of dovetail bench | 37
Harvard | Spring 2012
LADDER OUT OF TIME Spring 2012 Projection ladder, projector
38 |
As an object exists in the world it becomes part of the stories of the people who pass through and around it. It carries traces of these interactions physically, often invisibly; it leaves traces perceptually, often unnoticed. We experience time as a linear, unidirectional phenomenon that unerringly propels us away from what we’ve known into the future. However, once a moment has existed it will always have existed, it will always have left its indelible mark. By overlapping a series of moments in the past of a ladder and projecting them back onto the ladder in the present, as the position and marks left on the ladder reveal their origins, the ladder comes unstuck in time.
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Harvard | Fall 2011
PEEP SHOW Fall 2011 Installation tulle, photo prints, paper
40 |
To contrast the tradition of voyeurism that ignores intimacy, the Peep Show examines the nuances of individual sexual experiences. The installation consists of a small, curtained space for one or two people at a time to look at photographs of naked bodies. The photos show a range of skin, from so little that the body part is unidentifiable, to as much as an entire torso. On the skin are words, parts of stories that the models have written of their most intimate sexual experiences. As the viewer becomes more familiar with the photographs, what at first appeared to be a suggestive photo series reveals itself as intimate snapshots into personal stories of sex and sensuality.
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Harvard |
PRISON LIGHT 2014 from Eastern State Penitentiary, PN
Once at the forefront of “humanitarian� incarceration, the pan-optic Eastern State Penitentiary gradually sprawled and densified into a violent, overcrowded, notorious den. In the years since it shut down, the rooms have been allowed to peel and decay as though abandoned. Likewise, lighting fixtures have only been added in select places, and the natural light that filters through the dirty skylights starkly reveals the years the complex has seen. It is easy to imagine walking its halls, searching out windows after the cramped, dim cells. Besides the pathos and weight of rooms which have seen so many years of pain, the atmosphere also reveals the simple beauty of sunlight.
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PORTRAITS 2005 - 2015 graphite, water color, ink
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REBUILDING THE INVISIBLE COAST: Photographic Narratives of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi (excerpt) The following pages come from an essay analyzing a series of photographs that document the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The photos included come from various media outlets memorializing the hurricane on the its tenth anniversary in August 2015, and therefore imply both current and historical perspectives on the disaster. Each photo is identified by its source, location, significance, and primary media appearances. I argue that the photos in national media outlets present Mississippi post-Katrina as hopeless and defeated, a quieter echo of the situation in New Orleans, while those in local media present a battered but resilient community. As a result, the nation largely overlooks Mississippi’s staggering losses due to the hurricane, and its impressively swift recovery. ——— Some disasters occur so quickly and thoroughly that they delineate time: the world before and the world after. More than anything else, our response to the disaster determines how those times differ. When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, the country responded with a mix of shock and outrage: shock at the extent of destruction in several metropolitan centers, and outrage at the inadequate government preparation and response to what quickly became a humanitarian crisis. Local and national photographers who arrived to illustrate the crisis significantly shaped popular opinion post-Katrina. Recently, the tenth anniversary of Katrina has brought many of these photos back into circulation, and with them the distinct visual depictions of events by local and national media outlets. This differing perspective from local to national media is most apparent when comparing photographs of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the region hit hardest by the storm. These photographs of Mississippi in particular retain a bitter poignancy, reflecting the region that feels its experiences were never, even in retrospect, nationally acknowledged. Being a complicated and geographically idiosyncratic event, the national media tended to simplify Hurricane Katrina into the storm that hit New Orleans and caused its inadequate levees to fail, devastating its poorer neighborhoods. Immediately after the storm, the nation focused on this failure, its complicated racial roots in New Orleans, and the sudden and devastating refugee-evacuee crisis of hundreds of thousands of dislocated people. These discussions muffled the unique realities of other regions hit by the hurricane, such as the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which had borne the most direct hit from the storm. The Sun Herald, the largest newspaper in coastal Biloxi Mississippi, gave its region the nickname “Invisible Coast”: “The telling of Katrina by national media has created the illusion of the hurricane’s impact on our Coast as something of a footnote.” ——— Fields of rubble became a common subject of Katrina photographs, especially showing the many neighborhoods whose homes had partially or completely exploded from the pressure gradients created by high winds during the hurricane. The first two pictures here, one nationally and the second locally circulated, demonstrate the different narratives these types of photos can imply. Though we can make out distant silhouettes, the woman in Figure 7 appears alone, isolated and in shock among the matchsticks that remain of her home. Again here we see the inhuman perspective— the camera is too high for a standing person— which emphasizes the smallness and anonymity of the woman and the expanse of the debris. The sky is cloudy, and the colors muted. The road stretches almost to the horizon line ahead of her, a seemingly impossible distance. The soldiers in Figure 8, on the other hand, step authoritatively through natural and human detritus, surveying the damage without being subsumed by it. They command the photograph and pronounce the state’s resilience. In contrast to Figure 7, and the hopelessness when faced with innumerable pieces of homes, the soldiers and onlookers in the background appear to calmly assess the rubble. They appear capable of beginning the long process of cleaning up and looking forward. These last two images are the most intimate. Both describe personal experiences of the storm through objects, the second revealing more of a complex situation while the first reduces it to a cliché. CNN’s photograph (figure 9) shows a clock, the kind you might find in your kitchen, with its hands frozen in the moment the water hit— the moment that time stopped. The clock has been propped against a tire, with further evidence of its context cropped out. The state branch of the national guard’s photograph (figure 10), in contrast, presents a narrative of the events of the storm through human presence in the objects. The image portrays a smoker with a camera, a woman judging by the lipstick on one of the cigarettes, who lingered for two cigarettes before leaving when the water started to rise. The dead perch beside the dry ashtray locates this scene just above the waterline, from which the fish must have jumped onto the mantle. From this single image we can read the events of its absent occupant before the storm, as well as the storm itself. By showing an array of objects not waterlogged and dirty, but a result of the storm, this second image humanizes the hurricane above the first image, which only dramatizes it. Katrina in Mississippi has largely entered the national consciousness through these kinds of dramatic scenes. The photos have a general quality of almost apocalyptic hopelessness: dim colors, extreme (inhuman) perspectives, fewer signs of life. These photos tell a story less than they describe a situation, and the situation is bleak. Each building, each city is destroyed. Time has stopped, without an imaginable future. People are grieving, and the sky is overcast. These photos offer little indication that recovery in Mississippi could ever have taken place. Photos taken and used by local sources, on the other hand, do not mask out the sunlight. They are more colorful, populated, and occasionally even humorous. They paint a more nuanced picture of the life and culture of the Coast. These photographers cared for their subject, and needed the nation to acknowledge it. In the aftermath of the hurricane in Mississippi, national news stories focused disproportionately on the ongoing crisis in New Orleans. Though Mississippi received federal assistance, and its recovery proceeded more smoothly than the flooded 46 |
Crescent City’s, a lack of national attention and sympathy discouraged many in the state. This underrepresentation informed the local media’s response to the event of the hurricane. Garnering national attention, and through it the kind of aid and recognition that New Orleans received, became the focus of several local media campaigns. The photos that have been recently revived by local sources demonstrate a pride in resilience but also a need for assistance, a massive loss of property and culture, a cry for help to move forward whose unanswered reverberations still inform the regional consciousness. The photographs that gained the most attention nationally of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the ones of complete destruction, played into a larger narrative of devastation that may have benefited Louisiana more directly, and relegated Mississippi to the annals of documented loss. The specific narrative of the communities in Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula, Pass Christian, Diamondhead, and many other places became illustrative supplements to the narrative of the specific cultural and political conflicts of the major city New Orleans. Mississippi acted as a poster child for hurricane relief for the Gulf Coast region including Louisiana and Alabama, rather than benefiting from a distinct narrative of its particular losses and needs. These events inform the photographs shot and published by Mississippians, who were aware of the tension between the news coverage the state received and a desire for a more complete or accurate portrayal. In response to this lack of coverage, state news outlets emphasized the religious and humanitarian recovery efforts of coastal communities. I have not included these photos of clean-up efforts by military responders, emergency food ration lines, the slow return of citizens, pet rescue, FEMA trailers, ad-hock church services held in featureless rooms, or the documentations of the many hand-made signs that people posted outside the ruins of their homes, praying for or threatening or reassuring those who remained. Most of these inspiringlyframed stories were neglected in the national representation of Mississippi’s situation in favor of a more dire visual language. Comparing media photographs that documented Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast reveals biases in how the event was portrayed, and consequently hints at the diversity of popular opinions. In the days and weeks immediately after the hurricane, local and national media outlets differed greatly in their representation of the destruction. The still-pervasive sentiment among Mississippians that the nation has overlooked the totality of their experience in favor of New Orleans’ is reenforced by the simplified and dramatic narrative in national news outlets, which described Mississippi’s situation as hopeless and rural. In contrast, local stories highlighted the coastal communities’ great resilience, generosity, and humanity in the face of so much loss. One could argue that each outlet saw the Mississippi it wanted to see. The state’s name is tarnished on the national stage, commonly the butt of inhumane or humorous stories. Though the national resources that flooded the state after the hurricane exposed the realities of the community to many sympathetic outsiders, the state’s reputation is slow to change. Even ten years after the fact, the nation still looks back on Mississippi’s experiences during Katrina largely as a story of devastation, rather than one of resilience.
Figure 7. A woman returns to her neighborhood in Long Beach. Associate Press; used by USA Today, Wikipedia, ABC7 News, and nola.com.
Figure 9. A muddy clock stopped at 6:06, when the water flooded it. CNN; used on CNN.
Figure 8. Three military responders navigate through wreckage on Washington Avenue in Ocean Springs. Mississippi Press; used by Wikipedia, history.com, boston.com, and al.com.
Figure 10. An ashtray with cigarette, crumpled film roll box, and a small perch on a mantle just above the waterline on the second story of a house in Pearlington. Mississippi National Guard.
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