ANTHONY MOREY CATALOG OF IDEAS
Š 2015
There was a time that nothing in this world could not be true. When knowing something did not make the rest of the world boring. When your imagination was truer than your eyes. How many times as a child would you sit on the edge of your bed and know, with all the truth in your heart, that if you stepped off you were landing in shark infested waters.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
000
2015
ARCHITECTURE THE IDIOM IS THE MESSAGE
001
All language itself is a derivative of symbolic meaning, agreed upon commonalities and utility. An Idiom is a combination of words and symbols that have a figurative meaning owing to its common usage. An idiom’s figurative meaning is separate from the literal meaning.
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, its a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”
MEET MEAT
026
Butchery is a process that may include the slaughter of animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or do any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish, and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments. A butcher may be employed by supermarkets, grocery stores, butcher shops and fish markets, slaughter house, or may be selfemployed.
Dr. Seuss
DICHOTOMIES A dichotomy is a way of splitting a whole into two non-overlapping parts. The partition types are to be jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. The parts has to offer separate entities to create the whole.
EDITOR: Duygun Inal ADVISORS: Thom Mayne Jeffrey Kipnis Dwayne Oyler Anthony Morey Southern California Institute of Architecture B. Arch 2014 Typeface Used Proxima Nova Family © 2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
030
anthony morey catalog of ideas
001
2015
ARCHITECTURE:
THE
IDIOM
As architects, we have a common language, a frame of thought that allows us to jump between minds, worlds, and ideas. We must, of course, not cast these frames aside, but to the contrary, we must master them, know them from within; know where they can not suffice, wonder if they are really up for the task at hand. Words are but symbols for the relations of things to us and to each other. Conventions are architecture’s language and its most common forms of words. Conventions are solely defined by our use of them. As a method of producing, architects make a “plan” that forces them into this framework, which pushes them to the reforms and the stringent ideals of architectural convention(-ness). Submitting to these conventions is a critical moment of reduction.
IS
THE
MESSAGE
Translation instead of reduction is key in fostering suspension of disbelief and allowing for associations to be found or lost. Leaping is capable of bringing together impossible moments and ideas, providing us with a way to breakthrough. Untied to historical restraint, allowing the non-sequacious leap as a tool of lucid disruption to retrieve adults lost naiveté, it is possible to delay the conventionalizing of an idea. Youth’s naiveté allows for such leaping. Allowing for answers to appear before questions, exploiting the impossibility of architectural conventions as absolutes, embracing fragility and slipperiness, one becomes both the autonomous author and the autonomous spectator.
INFORMATION LEGEND RD: Research Drawings RM: Research Models TD: Tangent Drawings TM: Tangent Models
All information is delegated as research or tangents. Research (RD/RM) is work that progressed through the investigations and are presented as strong landing points. Tangents (TD/TM) are explored as side steps, novel experiments or glimpses into the realities of the research.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
002
2015
T-00121
T-00125
T-00145
T-00147
T-00150
T-00167
T-00180
T-00192
T-00195
T-00203
T-00218
T-00229
T-00232
T00245
T-00247
T-00250
T-00258
T-00266
T-00267
T-00278
T-00289
T-00312
T-00364
T-00603
T-00618
T-00631
T-00704
T-00720
T-00747
T-00405
T-00422
T-00440
T-00456
T-00467
T-00480
This research started as a study into the way we perceive, are manipulated, and the possibility of delaying associations. These images are a brief walk-through into those associations and an introduction on how we might be able to overcome certain limitations.
ink on watercolor paper (18”x12”)
The above are a series of Rorschach tests created for the purpose of understanding perception, or a glimpse into what we call ‘perception’. The
studies allowed for freedom or fracture in the conscious mind that allows form to be displayed unpretentiously, while being perceived prejudicially. Both color and monochrome experiments were used to understand the nature of readings and memory contaminated perception. The key is allowing the mind to see without being dictated and for objects to be discovered by associations through unraveling of personalized memories and thoughts.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
003
T-00906
2015
T-00913
T-00921
“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.” Socrates
T-00925
T-00959
T-00934
T-00961
T-00945
T-00968
Rorschach tests originally were known as Klecksographs pioneered by Justinus Kerner, who included Klecksographs in his books of poetry. Since the 1890’s, psychologists have used it as a tool for studying the subconscious, most famously Hermann Rorschach in his Rorschach inkblot tests. The loose-ness of reading, varied associations and freedom from normal conventions, the Rorschach provided a way into the topic of the sense of perception. Each viewed variation allows for a new opportunity of perception. As adults we impose narratives and tendencies in pursuit of totalizing goals and/or explanations.
T-00976
ink on watercolor paper (18”x12”)
T-00980
T-00983
Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. Defined as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”, it has come to the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general such with language, graphics, forms and ornamentation. WHAT
MIGHT
THIS
BE?
question
imagination
object
subjective
This short and innocent sentence was which was asked of participants in these tests. The sentence is minimized in order to supply the lowest level of rules while enticing your imagination to take over. Black on black / white on black were used to exploit and expand the tests limits. Each progression made and analyzed as a way to understand form as a singular and to understand how such form is deciphered, and viewed with only the bias of the spectator.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
004
T-11050
T-11380
T-11590
crayon on paper
2015
T-11270
T-11450
T-11600
The examples to the left are of a parallel route of engagement into the mind’s ability to see and its simultaneous failure of understanding. Children between the ages of 2-6 were asked to draw their homes, themselves or their families. Homes resembled homes, and people resembled people but nothing is perfect, yet they all give us an emotion, nostalgia. To what is that nostalgia tied? What is there in the image that allows us all to see something different?
Irrelevant, banal, futile, disconnected from imagination. Architecture has forced itself to the brink of necessity in an unending urge to fathom inconsequential form. Just as addicts yearn to fulfill a physical dependency; we heighten the dosage, anticipating the initial sublime high.
The mind’s prejudice of viewing and its representation were completely disconnected from what we, as depicted and mature subjects seem to perceive. So the question arise, was their perception faulty, or was ours?
This freedom of view and discovery because of need is one that architecture lacks in today’s world. A quality that we are born with but as we age, and grow and mature we allow for our rational mind to control our decisions.
Children just are. They exist in a relentless state of infinite possibilities. They are unaware of any scheme and because of so, they are completely present, in the moment.
Considered as one step into architecture from the previous Rorschach, these selected studies show how children understand our shared world, communicate and analyze it.
Using these drawings as a launching point for a way to analyze our interpretation of form, or lack there of, along with the innocence and the brutality that brings these seemingly distant associations together allows for a fresh take.
Form is gone, it is not absolute. There is no signified and no absolute signifier. No History. Instead, it is replaced by an idea, color and shape that means something more than a formal exploit. It is a glimpse into their realities.
“Did the cavemen set out to find a twobedroom cave?” Jeffrey Kipnis
anthony morey catalog of ideas
005
2015
The inception to this inquiry finds its roots from a translation of a photo taken by Philippe Halsman in 1948 titled Dali Atomicus (Page 007). With one photo proving to be the right level of impossible, various other attempts were casted aside. This photo exemplifies the qualities and inklings that were important to this project. These irregular qualities forced only architecture to bend, not the idea. Allowing for the idea to stay pure and naive a little longer, allowed to cook more, gain qualities, power, and understanding. They force our rules to be broken.
Roland Barthes and Paul Valery among various others declare through their work that, there came a point when writing, originally founded on the idea of pure communication was freed from its initial utility and writers were allowed to experiment, excite, become sensational. This is when literature, freed from its economy, leapt in order to re-form; to find a new identity. They found this identity in the reader.
The drawings are translations of a highly articulated, two dimensionally aesthetic, producing a seemingly impossible, yet precise moment. From the trajectories of the cat through the air, to the direction of the water defying gravity, flying easels, and shadows are all at play; allowing at first glance an unquestionably attractive, intense, and delicate moment.
Mark Twain
Global coherence, with moments of localized incoherence brings upon immediate questioning and tension. These moments, these qualities defining their given rules, and laws were key exemplifications of the qualities that this research desired to bring into architecture. Due to the limits of the representational medium and translation process, spillovers and idioms were embraced and reacted as generators of non-sequacious leaps. This produced a method of authorship that allows for spontaneous intimacies to occur, for the (-ness) to take effect, cultivating new and previously unfathomable associations. Not being able to be contained in one stable convention allows them to break across barriers and through the strictness of interpretation. It invites decision and choice, it brings you in to find some reference, something to bring back to stability on your terms.
“You can not depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.�
The spectator then becomes a variable; their deciphering, their interpretation becomes an instrumental part of the production. Allowing this detective like obsession to allow a momentary glimpse, a second to take hold, to see what it would be like if you never saw a plan, a section, an axon, it would not be tied by those names and the baggage they drag along, you would be free to see. What an incredible feat of the imagination it must be to see something for the first time, to not know for that split second if we are lost, scared, safe, or capable of understanding. The works through out here are just that, pure convention, with a touch of fantasy along with impossibilities. Not allowing reduction to eliminate a project from the first step. Turning each convention, each step as a completely realized, self-sufficient work of architecture. The three series presented to you here are those explorations, testing the ability of drawing as a technique,in all its iterations to explore, exploit and overreach the limits and their shackles. They allow for moments of slipperiness and chance to take over and invite the imagination.
RD-10000
anthony morey catalog of ideas
006
2015
R-00102
R-00105
parti The parti has long been a term and stable object in architecture. A point, a grid, a line, the part has stayed within the realm of logical reasoning yet our minds rarely function in the same manner. Allowing chaos as a control function allows for the mind to unlock its hidden patterns.
R-00131
extrusion
Dimensionality, relief or thinness are qualities that extrusion preoccupies.. Working from a flatten surface, extrusion allows for immediate inspiration for form to take hold. Pushing, pulling, stabbing, flowing, bending are all tools of the trade and slowly form is allowed to leave the confines of the initial plane.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Model - Thom Mayne Figure Ground Game - Jeffrey Kipnis Dot Dot Game - Texas Rangers Drawing Plug In City - Peter Cook Bloom - Perry Kulper Campo Marzio - Piranesi Victims - John Hedjuk Mezquita of Córdoba - Spain
R-00106
R-00123
translation
interstitial
collage
Translation tied closely to copy and impersonate. It allows for you to react and relay on certain qualities to pull through to the end. This allows for ideas to stay strong while allowing the participant or author of the freedom of responsibility of staying true to the original.
Out of place, this conclusion is based on the idea that objects are not part of the shared thread of connectivity in a whole. This lack of belonging space can be improvised and arrange as to satisfy the minds investigative urge. Using this space as an opportunity to mix multiple wholes into a exquisite whole.
Collage is an overlapping and composing of parts that allows for each single object to stay connected to its past, while contributing to the new organized whole. It does not blend, nor break but solely through exact placement will it become new. Atmosphere, sensation and expression are key motives in the utilization of space and form.
R-00145
time
Time as an object not as a reference of distance can be used to pull situations, locations and ideas together in a seemingly flawless method. This allows for moments to be in proximity while historically impossible.
R-00148
tangential
Soft touching, proximity, and kissing creates a tension in the existence of two autonomous objects only in relation by position The tension is located in that through this space they relate and relationships are assigned.
Research was done as a way to build a library of terms and associations that could be pulled through the process and project. The autonomous nature of the work created its own urgency, trajectory and relevance. Not using reference as a way to admire old projects, significant works of architecture or images, as a way to pour remembrance into the past but to cast ideas forward with violent spurts of creation and action.
R-00160
truncation
Where one stops, the other continues. Truncation is architecture’s direct lineage to the exquisite corpse. This allows for qualities of one to inspire or stop with a moments notice. History, time and all other qualities are held hostage at a line or point of cease for one and start for another.
Fostering container of ideas and linguistic terms as a launching point to allow for surprises to arise or disappointments to stay hidden, it was not about being tied to history but as a canvas to react and understand its associative qualities. This allowed for ideas to stay loose. A way of introducing ideas and connections while resisting the banal and simplistic reductionism - typical of contemporary architectural representation. R00103
anthony morey catalog of ideas
007
2015
A photo is flat. If represented in plan or section as an absolute, it would produce a line or square. Viewing the flattening as an opportunity of re-envisioning makes that captured world possible and allows for new associations or limits these conventions. This gap between the worlds and rules is where this photo excels. It lacks complete stability and or relationship to be able to open our mind for invention. Direction, emotion, staging, and form are all broken down and reassembled as to make the impossible.
3 1
Breaking down each one of these moments, their relationships and reason for tension was a key way into understanding the method to represent them. Each objects’ re-translation into planar space allowed for movement, gravity, emotion and thoughts to make their way into architecture.
2
4
R-00190 Dali Atomicus (1948) Philippe Halsman and Salvador Dali
“Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will possible for you to sublimate them.” Dali
5
1. This one moment in the photo creates a point of stable reference, the hand, holding the chair - which also has different legs and kept at a constant negligence of the ground planeaccentuates the idea of the displacement of the normal state for the rest of the composition, yet still not completely understandable as a guide until the whole is analyzed and compared.
Initially tackling the qualities of Plan and Section, Objects and their locations, their moment in time and all other variations they could foster were taken into account. Allowing various possibilities and impossibilities to be combined and analyzed as one, made it possible to use chaos as tool of stability in thought. There is an immediate knowable quality to the drawings, a grasp ability. Classic tools were at use focusing on those that allow for such constant common readings to occur; poché, gestalt, hard lines, flattening of
2. The water and the chair are in a state of not depicting how the water is falling, it could be falling upward, against gravity, fighting the normal way water acts. This contrast creates a constant rethinking of the scene as a whole. 3. The cat is an object that is alive and is being treated in a way to show that the scene is alive, in a constant motion of change, a cat is not a chair, or static object but must change before and after this scene was made. This volatility is brought up even stronger with the use of a living participant. 4. The easel which normally would be the focus of a photo of an artist is empty, the finished piece of art to the side is no longer the focus of the whole, the art itself has been torn as the center of the focus. Floating, casting a shadow, its utility is modified. 5. The stool, the masterpiece of the whole composition, the anchor that keeps it all sane, the calmness in which it is levitated, giving away the whole trick yet itself become part of it. It is keeping the relationship to the ground constant but a slight levitation allows its belonging in chaos.
shapes, inferiority, elevation, proximity, movement. Bringing the signifier of the plan and section to be called into question, allowing themselves to begin fostering new associations, only possible when teased. There is no stair, elevator, steel column detail, and there should not be. Calling attention to moments, implying movement, not direction. Showing volume, but no scale. All these were used as mediums of thought, not as absolutes or conclusive of each idea.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
008
2015
Drawing is today’s medium that allows for experimentation, youthful imagination, and for freedom of thought. Drawing is thinking. It can jump between idealized fictions to truths with little or no consequence. Allowing us to arrive at destinations from a new vantage point, to test the conventions that we hold onto so highly. Some ideas cannot be contained to these strict rules we have created, some ideas exist in that gap, fill the gap and force us to realize the possibility of the impossible. Drawing is the only medium of architecture that can challenge physical limitations by completely ignoring them. Gravity, time, direction are all at the creators’ discretion or interpretation. Allowing oneself to study conventions from within one of architecture’s most sacred conventions, the drawing. Not taking anything for granted, knowing certain inert tools are not appropriate for the task at hand. This grants us the ability to step away, create a new space, and discover, this is where this thread of research finds itself. Not starting from scratch, not trying to be original, only trying to find some place safe, to stop, look and invite a little slipperiness, lucidness into the conversation. This allows all the freedoms of tropes, rules, irony, and weaknesses. Of course you can not escape convention, while completely aware of such an impossibility; that in itself is where this research hopes to land, at the cliff edge, where we can look over and wonder, just wonder, what it might be like to jump, and what the possibilities might be.
RD-00301
Used as an associative machine, producing drawing, banking on previous conventions such as plans, sections, elevations, building, rendering, model, composition, and image will expose the fractures upon which to be exploited. Brutally coupling qualities of phenomenology and Cartesian methods of space and drawing; this research strives to search, discover and accidentally encounter moments of mis-alignment. On its own form is void of context and meaningless; allowing the break from rigidity of an inherent meaning towards a speculative one. From Piranesi, to the Texas Rangers (dot-dot game), to Eric Owen Moss (Culver City), to Perry Kulper (Bloom) there has been an inclination to exploit and understand how the combination of a primitive, simple form could produce a latency from words to their images, a schism of consciousness, allowing a momentary fracture in association, a speculative view once had, now lost. Architecture and its process may not be about upward progress of a staircase or a fluid motion of a facade but about evoking acts of gathering, or dispersing, calling attention to a spot or moment in an other wise chaotic group of symbols. There is a larger pleasure in discovery than in knowing; while knowledge provides comfort, uncertainty keeps us alive and engaged in the world. Architecture lies between the limits of the conscious mind to decipher the limitless limits of the subconscious.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
009
2015
RD-00202
RD-00303
RD-00205
RD-00304
RD-00305
RD-00208
RD-00307
RD-00309
RD-00310
RD-00312
RD-00314
RD-00210
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
RD-00313
anthony morey catalog of ideas
010
2015
TD-00105
TD-00123 TD-00108
TD-00120
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
A small section of the previous drawings were chosen at random for their qualities. Shapes were allowed to appear, paying little respect for the ones that came before. Fighting to be simultaneously become independent of the work that fosters it, yet trying to find originality within its making. Desired is a search for meaning and structure, these drawings were a momentary glimpse into the value and possibilities of the drawings that gave birth to its character.
They play with vast differences: of scales, of types, of effects, of legibilities, and of signs within themselves. The drawings act selfishly, only investing in their own qualities, in their own relationships and in their own nonsenses. They are allowed to be unaware of their own errors and shortcomings as the canvas was hoping to behave as a child’s mental playground. Void of form as a purpose but as a way of tapping into possibilities, a mental treat.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
011
2015
RD-00315
RD-00316
RD-00212
RD-00318
RD-00320
RD-00321
RD-00323
RD-00324
RD-00325
RD-00215
RD-00327
RD-00328
RD-00330
RD-00331
RD-00332
RD-00333
RD-00335
RD-00337
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
anthony morey catalog of ideas
012
RD-00339
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
2015
RD-00343
anthony morey catalog of ideas
013
2015
TM-00100
TM-00105
TM-00106
TM-00107
TM-00121
TM-00126
TM-00131
TM-00129
mixed media models
TM-00130
With an urge to develop the project into multiple dimensions and depth; the drawings were forced to comply. Stabbed through and associated as plans, sections, elevation at a rotations notice, each model was formed to see a glimpse into the possibilities fully knowing it was not time to see the complete ability or temptations. As each model was produced as a tangent to the project it was allowed to extrude forms from the
planes and interact with the plans of others with little or no consequence or responsibility. The drawings were allowed to thicken and become spacial in only that the graphics could be pulled to different planes. While a striking level or reduction is visible, it was an important tangent to view the possibilities. The multitude of mental possibilities that these assuringly architectural graphics and languages evoke their own voices and forms.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
014
2015
RD-00346
RD-00231
RD-00347
RD-00348
RD-00349
RD-00350
RD-00352
RD-00353
RD-00354
RD-00355
RD-00235
RD-00356
RD-00357
RD-00242
RD-00358
RD-00361
RD-00363
RD-00245
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
anthony morey catalog of ideas
015
2015
“For me ‘the past’ does not exist, because I consider that everything is simultaneous in our culture and similarly in judging architecture I do not see any fracture between ancient and modern” Giò Ponti, Amate l’architettura, 1957
RD-00367
RD-00373
RD-00376
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
RD-00369
RD-00374
RD-00378
RD-00370
RD-00256
RD-00379
The past is no longer an impenetrable wall of consequences and absolutes. It is no longer an immense library of dogmatic and superior achievement that passes judgment on a lesser present. It is no longer that older child that we must look for approval. It is not the dead weight of success and failures that must be cast-off before anyone can be free enough to do anything. We no longer need to burden ourselves of the knowledge that nothing we will ever do will never compare to anything in the countless multitudes of past perfections.
History is ours. History is an ancient stone on our door, beckoning to be thrown. It is our Pantheon step from which we get bricks and stones and metal to put together our own towers of steal. History is nourished by this, it is fed, filled and destined to live longer than any text could promise, it gets bigger every time something new is formed from its bones, it grows and fattens. Every stone we remove allows for countless others to find their fit into the time-line of our lives. Our acts of creation with the ideas of the past transforms the whole of history. We keep it alive. We keep it growing. We save it from the Historians and the Museums. It is us who make sure that the most obscure medieval painter is as much a part of our lives as the latest dancing puppy video.
History belongs to us. We are history and history exist because we do not merely repeat the past. Each of us is history, our own, and the collectives.
Architecture can strive where the threshold between waking and sleeping is worn away in the architect and is flooded by images continuously with no hindrance.
We can cut it up and put it back together in whatever manner we choose. It does not belong to those who made it: they have willed it to us in the very act of passing. It is not owned by texts and scholars. It is our gift, it is our souls, our character, our good and evil. It is what makes us uniquely modern, and current. It means we do not need to begin each time from scratch, it means we have material with which to build our future.
“Quietly. I want to pass where no one yet has passed, quietly! - After you my dearest language” Andre Breton Unexpected juxtapositions and contradictions in a departure from the usual rational appearance of architectural form awaits. History begs to be re-written.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
016
2015
TD-00203
TD-00207
TD-00208
TD-00209
TD-00212
TD-00215
TD-00218
TD-00220
TD-00224
TD-00228
TD-00235
TD-00236
TD-00237
TD-00239
TD-00245
Love, sadness, desire, intuition and memories are at frowned upon terms in architecture, a way to distance itself from art. The characters positioned in front of you had various, singular or no roles in the creation of the drawings.
inkjet on archival paper (8�x10�)
All of them are left to you to organize, see their value as singular objects, a group or as playful thoughts. Or cast them aside.
Qualities of the drawings were once again poached the frame they were contained. Allowing the form to inspire memories, emotion, reactions and new forms to come to mind. Place them as you like and see what you are left with; so tell me, what do you see? The have no scale and no intention to have any, nor any desire to be classified.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
017
RD-00381
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
2015
RD-00383
RD-00385
RD-00386
RD-002763
RD-00271
RD-00387
RD-00388
RD-00275
RD-00390
RD-00392
RD-00278
RD-00393
anthony morey catalog of ideas
018 Not allowing the mind to exercise leaves little space for improvement. Architecture seems to have lost its humor, its surprise. Allowing for some contributions, some feeling to be brought out allows you to get pulled in. Architecture has long been a solitary production, this ability to project, pull and use that as a generative method of architecture allows for associations usually not attainable. Allowing for creations that could not be generated by one brain alone. The gap between methods, the gap between what is delivered is then personal, it is yours, to create, exploit, give meaning, forget, or disregard. Those spaces, gaps are to be invented, giving joy in the generative nature, making connections between the fragments, making things up, not tied to any pretentious assumptions of right or wrong. The drawing has long been seen as a static creation, something that references an object for a form of analytical understanding. Allowing it to strive for a larger role, a dynamic role could find new strengths. It urges for its own agency, for a write to jump, leap, make assumptions; see its own spaces, forms, characters and rip them to life. What if they could do more, now finally freed from their trap of construction, of pure utility, pure communication, could they? Would we allow them? Could they share ideas, could they not dictate, could they not give you more than dimensions and space? Could they not find a way to exist with new limits, playing a new game, allowing for some contamination?
2015
Allowing the mind to take rational, accepted architectural forms and radicalize them through a process of condensation, displacement and various others allow for purely imaginative, seemingly irrational, dream like compositions. This taps into the unconscious, allows its freedom to be tempted, for desire to push forward and rewritten the rules. Memories, history, thoughts and all our unknowns erupt into the forefront creating a palimpsest of layers of different elements and mechanisms. This allows for the seemingly irrational to become the key of unraveling the potential creative power of our unconscious. Dreams do have structure. They are made of disconnected fragments of visual and auditory residue which are then transformed into various coherent yet unpredictable relationships with each progressive one contradicting the previous. Destroying only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision. This idea of discovery leads to both authorship and reader to exist simultaneously. The ideal way of creativity is at points not be completely aware that the act of creativity is being pursued. Thus architecture would be capable of enacting and expressing human identity, thought and consciousness. These drawings, models and various manifestations of loosened creativity allowed for self referential games. Allowing for a multi playing of elements in relation to form of function or convention. Creativity and its flow to architecture is most free from its rules and form when it is in direct contradiction to those rules and form so historically tied to its significance.
RD-00395
019
TD-00305
ink on mylar (24”x36”)
anthony morey catalog of ideas
2015
anthony morey catalog of ideas
020
2015
TD-00310
TD-00311
TD-00315
TD-00316
TD-00318
TD-00319
TD-00325
TD-00327
TD-00330
TD-00331
ink on mylar (24�x36�)
The next level of research takes the Plan / Section qualities and translates them, turning the drawings into volumetric explorations. Finding depth in the presence of drawing; can a drawing have depth?, Can it have volume? Tools that we usually rely on to give sanity to an otherwise incoherent set of graphics. Volume, Shadow, Ground, and Perspective again are all at play. Shadow is finally just as powerful, questions its own existence, where does it end, or begin?
Shadows continue through mass, or have mass themselves. A single line can either create depth, deceive it, or eliminate it. Using the tools that are inherent in the axonometric, such as volume, shadow, contrast and exposure are still in use yet the viewer is not placed any closer to an answer solely using those. Here, the only tool capable of revealing the answer is the viewer, not the author.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
021
2015
RM-00110
RM-00120
RM-00130
RM-00111
RM-00121
RM-00131
physical model (24”x24”)
anthony morey catalog of ideas
022
2015
RM-00122
RM-00112
Physicality. All architecture forces dimension, we revere it, and we live in it. We create it. This is the last step of the series, it is where all architecture culminates; the space. It is presented to you as a thickened paper, a thickened shadow, not as a model, allowing for complete engagement. It deals with material, perception, physical depth, touch, thickness but does not allow for much more. It is torn between
the drawing experiment that fosters it, or the realities of the physicality that forces it to extrude. Each relief was created as a way of hinting at space, form and movement. Not settling, not just yet forced into a convention. These explorations are to be both model and shadow, object and void. Interior and exterior, plan and section. Architecture always seems to be forced to make decisions, even when its not ready to do so.
RM-00132
physical model (24�x24�)
anthony morey catalog of ideas
023
2015
The only limit we face is that of our minds, the ability to walk the thin line between our rational tendencies and our unconscious urges. Architecture is a medium, not a goal. Each curve, extension and hallway is a result of these two halves colliding, allowing for a momentary glimpse into the overlap. We need to give our minds the space to grow, to be itself, to exercise our diversity. We need to give it space so that it may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, failure, chance and impossibilities as tangents for exploration. In the process of thought, we are the hindrance, not the idea. Ideas are pure. Yanked into existence the moment we conceive them. There is no impossibility, only avenues not yet explored. We must not create as we see, but as we imagine. If we learn to remove our hindrance (ourselves), and see, refocus and understand what the work says, we may find it has its own voice, its own desires and its own urge to become more. “When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks at you.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Nothing More, Nothing Less, Architecture is Thinking.
mixed media on mylar (24”x36”)
RD-10052
anthony morey catalog of ideas
024
2015
Meet The indifference of the digital realm has lead to a proliferation of apathy or disregard to consequence. With little repercussions to the whole or to the remnants of the whole; a blob cut and reformed is a new blob, not two; but a baby cut in two is no longer indifferent but a travesty. That inability for the digital realm to understand the repercussions of such an act is what creates a point of corruption. Slicing and cutting is a primal urge to search, tear and find meat; finding the tender parts of a mass, separation of a physical object, or a portion of a physical object, into two or more parts. In the digital, we are no longer forced to slice through all the layers to reach center. The center is whole in itself, isolated from the surrounding layers. The digital removes the brutality of the act, but allows us to expand on its effects, blurring the aesthetics of brutality.
Meat Scarring, healing, scabbing, is no longer associated with digital cutting, it is no longer a way of seeing the act, it becomes an act of exuberance, ornamentation, removing the act from its aggression. Leonardo da Vinci discovered that through drawing and was able to convey ideas before unheard of, prioritizing certain cuts, levels and layers of the mass, creating a new method of exposure and revealing. This project strives to bring the indifference of the digital brutality, slicing to locally reveal, globally conceal, break mass; to keep a sense of the whole together. Bringing attention to the brutal act of nonform, adhering mass cutting, using the idea or memory of brutality, in order to corrupt the whole reading of the mass.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
025
2015
There he woke up, bright as can be.
“I will be back soon” Meat said as he found his way out the door. Step... “Squeaky” Step... “Squeaky” Step... “Squeaky”
“AH” His whole body hurt beyond belief, he scream from the intensity. It stung all over, each limb, each inch. What happened? Who would do this? Why him? He wanted to go home. Please.
On the eve of his thirteenth birthday, never allowed to leave his backyard, Meat decided to go for a walk. To go further than he had before, just over the ridge where he heard all the sounds, saw all the lights.
Night came again, Day, Night, Day, Night, Day passed. The pain no closer to leaving, his eyes getting heavier and heaver as time passed. Meat had no idea what awaited him.
What were those lights sounds he wondered?
Soon, small things started to appear, they made noise, they moved around, they moved in groups.
Sadly, he was not there to see his birthday at all.
He had walked too far, he had come too far.
selected animation stills
Suddenly his eyes slowly opened, how long was he asleep? Why could not he move?
What were they and why were they here? Meat wondered.
He could feel them within him.
He needed a rest and decided to lay down for a bit. All he needed was to close his eyes for a few before he could continue. He never thought it would last this long. He opened his blanket and laid right in.
Making space, stabbing him, cutting him open, moving and cutting. Moving around and around looking for the line to cut. The pain was impossible to handle yet all these moving objects seem to happily continue it.
Slowly closed his eyes, wondering what adventures awaited ahead.
What were they and what did they want? What were they looking for?
anthony morey catalog of ideas
026
2015
Why were they dancing, jumping? The tickling made him smile, sometimes. At least in the beginning. He saw them move around with the small versions of themselves attached. The smaller ones ran all over, did what they wanted and said as they wished. They smiled with the freedom he once had, the one he left behind.
He wondered what the walking figures saw when they walked inside, his stomach filled with steps, his back walked up as stairs, his skin, pealed to allow them to view inside. It started as one, Then two, three, four, and now he could not keep count. They never stopped and some never came out for days. Tearing and ripping, cutting and stabbing.
As time passed Meat started to enjoy these creatures and they, too, happily enjoyed his presence. They did not know what to make out of him but enjoyed him all the same, with little reverence to his origins, or pain. They started to stay longer, not be scared and some even passed by not realizing he was there.
Not completely sure why or how but the buildings near him seemed a bit closer now, and he felt a bit bigger, as if they were hugging him. In doing so, they allowed him to rest, they relieved some of his stress. He knew he would not last forever, but this gave him a sense permanence, a sense of belonging.
All he wanted was to go home.
Yet somehow he knew, that day was long gone.
selected animation stills
He wanted to be wanted, to be seen; he seemed to miss when they did not come around anymore and play in his spaces.
Things were changing around him so quick, he did not even know how to get home, or what home was. All he knew now was the pain.
All he had ever wanted was to go home yet all he wanted now was to be seen, to not be forgotten.
What could he do? If anyone looked for him, would they find him?
He wanted those creatures back, he wanted them to walk and jump and tickle.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
027
2015
Somehow the questions stopped, and Meat thought no more. He knew he had started to snuggle into a perfect combination of angle and comfort.
They studied and found ways to create and build him. Meat slowly died away and he became a conversation of surfaces, lines columns and ADA access ramps.
The had taken over and were used to him. No fear, even curiosity shifted, from discovery to enjoyment.
Imagination became stagnant, he was no longer filled with wonder, no longer an inspiration for the “what if” ideas. Meat had become a chapter in the long lineage of history.
He felt it, they liked him, they admired him.
They were not be misled by what they saw around them, or be influenced by what they saw. They saw a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. One they had not witnessed before, one they had not been a part of previously.
Sadly Meat never made it back home. Instead became one.
Soon those little running creatures started to wonder what they had come across, what it was they had found. They studied it, dissected it, took images of it, made drawings. How did it get here? Why was it here? Were there more?
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we are curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. Fairy tales are as ancient as we are. The stories always have been more than simply the fear aspect, simply the entertainment. There is something deeply psychological. This attribute is what makes the digital so distant in architecture. They are no repercussions to the brutality we apply, booleans are not the same as cutting through a real piece of mass. To us, it is completely disconnected from reality, this gap leaves a large space for opportunity. Found between the worlds of representation and narrative, animation and cartoon-ish presence allows for experimentations in all forms of architectural conventions. For full animation of ‘MEET MEAT’
selected animation stills
http://ynotworkshop.com/john-soane-museum-london/
anthony morey catalog of ideas
028
2015
D
I
ABSOLUTE ARCHITECTURE BUILDING ORDINARY PENETRABLE
C
H / / / / /
O
AMBIGUITY TECH GROUND EXTRAORDINARY INACCESSIBLE
Obsessed with nature and technology, but seldom understand the consequences and responsibilities of both, we are fascinated by organic systems and mobile networks, the environment and the Internet, the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam. This obsession is a cognitive dissonance of our time. The long view of our acculturation of nature is necessary to understand the absolute wonder of where we are and what we are capable of.
T
O
M
I
E
S
Our acculturation of nature is a mark of our existence as human beings. Where and when this awareness started could be argued but our urge to imitate nature is a long lasting desire. The line of artificial and natural is blurred to new levels with the appearance of recent technologies. This has allowed for nature to be ripped from the shackles of forest and exist at a desk, a lab or a glass sphere. These methods allow us to work seamlessly between the worlds and create new moments of nature at a whim. Materials are not bound by their properties and history. Nature has become a medium, a test subject to be studied and prodded for thoughts and ideas.
anthony morey catalog of ideas
029
2015
M-005
M-008
M-011
M-012
M-018
M-030
M-034
M-041
M-053
M-056
M-062
M-065
M-066
M-068
M-070
M-071
M-081
M-082
These metal cube “clouds” were used as a tool to visualize the tension between nature and technology. As a means to bring the impossible awe of the Grand Canyon into the palm of your hand. Allowing the crevices to erupt. M-074
casted aluminum models
M-076
M-077
M-078
The Cube is used as a nature of control. As in the movie Promethius “God does not build in a straight line”, the hard edges and form control is used for nature to come under the dominion
of technology and humanity. Each version is comparable only through it’s external implied shape while its inner volume is allowed all the freedoms of natures desires. The majestic moments in life are those that have been those astonishing moments when you have thought something was impossible, yet you saw it, when you wondered why it was but in reality did not care.
“Every
child
is
an
architect artist. The
problem
is
architect how to remain an artist once we grow up.�
Pablo Picasso / Anthony Morey
Your four year old version? What would (s)he tell you? Likely something along the lines of, do not settle, do not let knowing something stop you from questioning it in the first place. Do not let fact tear you from fiction. Do not let answers destroy the urge to ask more and more questions. Ideas are calm, but history is hysterical. We owe it ourselves to push these limits, to continue to push these limits and be our own author.