Disjoint and Distortion by Sarah Vaz

Disjoint and Distortion An Essay in Manifesting Contradiction

Sarah Vaz ÂŠ 2014

abstract

The systems that make our social structure possible are invisible. The CSX Queensgate train yard just west of downtown Cincinnati is one of the largest rail classification facilities in North America, and yet the public is only marginally conscious of its existence. We accept this discrepancy because we accept so many other discrepancies. We live in an era in which paradox is paradigm. It is the incongruity of the paradoxical, Robert Venturi theorizes, that suggests a kind of truth. This thesis investigates incongruity by looking, thematically as well as formally, at three art movements of the twentieth century that embrace incongruous processes and conclusions: surrealism, expressionism, and relational art. This investigation focuses on two methods by which the incongruous is manifested, calls them disjoint and distortion, and applies them towards the programming and design of an amusement park to function above the operating train yard.

How much potential madness is hidden in the everyday order of things? witold gombrowicz, Ferdydurke

vii

content

viii

absurd realism

movements + methods

III

disjoint: site + program

distortion: design

ad absurdum: two stories

instances of idiosyncrasy aberration as absorption

surrealism, gutai, and relational art disjoint and distortion

rail yard as contradiction amusement park as counterpoint

mapping warped space misinterpretation by motion

Pilgrimage: a Dystopia The New Arrangement

previous page: the oversized apparatus of Arthur Gansonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Machine with Wishbone, which sole purpose is to make the wishbone walk, becomes analogous to the massive hidden systems that underlie what we see only as simple structures.

abridged

The first chapter of this document attempts to explain absurdity as a result of plurality, that is, as a result of the coexistence of competing ontologies; as a result of difference. The capacity to absorb the incongruous becomes increasingly important in a social system that appears ever more convoluted. In Complexity and Contradiction, Robert Venturi discusses the need for a distorted, perverse, and inconsistent architecture that would manifest the latent contradictions of the epoch. In Monsters of Architecture, Marco Frascari describes the aberration, the “monster,” as a body in metamorphosis, in the process of adapting to diverse stimuli and changing contexts. This is Venturi’s distorted, perverse, and inconsistent architecture – an architecture that manifests the contradicting forces that make it, and exists in a permanently intermediate state. The aberration is the native product of absurdity. The second chapter is a study of three art movements from the twentieth century that deal in manifesting contradiction: Surrealism, the Gutai, and relational art. The Surrealists and the Gutai both sought to divorce the author’s intent from the final work in order that multiple meanings could be read into the same piece. Relational art limits the author to creating a framework for the participants’ interactions.The works from all three movements typically fall under the designation of “absurd” for the lack of singular logic that results from manifesting incongruity. This manifestation occurs through what Venturi

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terms adaptation and juxtaposition. Adaptation involves the distortion of the contradicting elements, while juxtaposition involves accentuating their incongruity by disjunction. The third chapter presents the site as a contradiction, and the program as a juxtaposition to the site. The site is the CSX Queensgate rail classification yard. It is located immediately west of downtown Cincinnati, occupies a larger land area than the central business district, and is an integral part of the distribution network for the region. The contradiction lies in the fact that despite its proximity, size, and importance, the rail yard is all but invisible to the public consciousness.The program is an amusement park.The park is a counterpoint to the yard: it is the highly visible space of consumption and leisure. By placing the amusement park above the rail yard its invisibility would become suddenly visible, and the contradiction would become manifest. The fourth chapter presents sketches for the design of the park. The design seeks two types of distortion. The first is the distortion of the site experience through the movement of the rides. The second is the distortion of the rides themselves and the development of a hybrid language that compromises both the amusement park typology as well as the rail yard typology. Two exercises in distortion are developed, one in mapping, and one in movement. The design is derived from these.

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absurd realism a framework for accepting multiple parallel ontologies

idiosyncrasy, n.

absurd realism

peculiarity of physical or physiological constitution; an instance of this.

absurd realism

instances

absurd realism

absorption

absurd realism

Architectural Aberrations: no. 1 The Edison Building, New York; no. 2 The Record Building, Philadelphia; no. 5 The Daily Record Building, Baltimore; no. 7 The Fagin Building, St. Louis

The first issues of Architectural Record, published in the 1890s, contain a recurring segment titled “Architectural Aberrations.” These works were culled from major metropolises and scornfully dissected by the editorial staff for their “very eminent badness.” They are described as possessing “a weird and wondrous ugliness,” “defying common decency,” even “crude and violent.”1 Their flaws result from such offenses as lack of composition, disregard for proportion or misrepresentation of structure: qualities which Robert Venturi extols nearly a century later in Complexity and Contradiction. Using adjectives such as distorted, perverse, vestigial, and inconsistent, Venturi outlines a “non-straightforward architecture” fit for what he suggests is a “period of upheaval.” At the time, however, these “aberrations” were pronounced “absurd.” The term “absurd” derives from the Latin absurdus, that which is out of tune or dissonant. In a recent publication, Log Journal, guest edited by Michael Meredith of MOS Architects, tackles the broad topic of “The Absurd.” In his introductory piece, Meredith calls for a manifesto for absurdity, to be titled “Absurd Realism,” that would embrace “multiple parallel, ontologies.”2 Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects articulates this same pluralistic approach in his description of the office’s modus operandi, the search for 1 2

Sweet, Clinton W., “Architectural Aberrations,” Architectural Record, Vol 1 (1891), 133. Meredith, Michael, “For the Absurd,” 9.

absurd realism

MOS Architectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Afterparty (2009), courtyard installation for MOMA PS1, a series of cooling chimney structures formed by inverted catenaries, covered in faux fur. next page: interior

“the ability to absorb the idiosyncratic.”3 The existence of parallel ontologies, of idiosyncrasy, is the foundation of nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s reflection on absurdity. In his journals Kierkegaard posits that absurdity is the belief taken on faith when multiple equally plausible yet contradictory alternatives are presented.4 The more we are made aware of the intricacy of the systems that surround us, the more these contradictions surface, and the more difficult it becomes to find a single encompassing narrative. To attempt to find such a narrative is to be frustrated; to ignore the discrepancies is to remain ignorant.The solution, therefore, must be to embrace and foster contradiction. This is absurd realism. Idiosyncrasy and parallel ontologies are addressed by French literary theorist Roland Barthes in his 1968 pamphlet “Death of the Author.” Barthes reasons that the true meaning of a text resides not in its author’s intention, but in the multiplicity of its readers’ interpretations. The author’s intention provides a final signification to the work that precludes plurality of meaning and thus must be removed.5 Among other methods of minimizing the author’s intention Barthes references Surrealist processes of automatic and collective writing.The products of these processes operate on the reader by what Barthes terms the “surrealist jolt,” that is, an awareness of the presence of contradictory readings. 3 4 5

Cook, Peter, Morphosis: Buildings and Projects, 9. Dru, Alexander, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, Barthes, Roland, “Death of the Author,” 49.

absurd realism

The task of the author then becomes to set up a framework that manifests the contradiction and generates multiple readings of it. The Surrealist movement sought to create that framework simply by separating the author from the work. Their methodology involved tapping the illogic of the subconscious mind through processes such as automatism and free association that seemed to pull the contradictions of the subconscious into reality. Similarly, the Gutai movement that began in Japan in 1953 (closely related to its American counterpart Abstract Expressionism, as well as the European Tachisme) sought to create the framework by eschewing authorial control through another kind of automatism that involved the exploration of material properties.6 These two movements aimed to bypass the author to create contradiction. Rather than denying the author, however, the art practice now known as Relational Aesthetics specifically limits the author’s control to the setting up of the framework. The final art piece is not an autonomous object as it was for the Surrealists and the Gutai, but an “arena of exchange.”7 The artist sets up a platform or scenario in which participants observe themselves and each other and their reactions and interactions become the focus of the piece. The platforms are generally absurd constructs that modify or highlight behavior. 6 7

Yoshihara, Jiro, “Gutai Manifesto,” 2. Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, 18.

absurd realism

a corkscrew slide in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall was Carsten Höller’s 2006 installation for the Unilever Series

absurd realism

Nicholas Di Genova maps genealogies of various monstrous inventions in Wunderkammer No. 1 (2009)

Absurdity is characteristic of Surrealist and Gutai art as well as the scenarios of Relational Art because it absorbs and manifests the fundamental contradictions of idiosyncratic and parallel ontologies. It does so either by adaptation or juxtaposition, as described by Venturi in Complexity and Contradiction. Adaptation involves the distortion of the contradictory elements, while juxtaposition involves accentuating the incongruity through disjunction. Venturi describes the outcome as a hybrid, compromised, and ambiguous architecture.8 It is the aberration: that which deviates from the expected. Italian architect and author Marco Frascari describes aberrations, or what he terms “monsters,” as “the extraordinary signs of an imaginative production.”9 The monster embodies the grotesque image of a body in metamorphosis,“changing its form in response to diverse stimuli and within varying contexts.”10 The aberration is the result of absorbing idiosyncrasy and parallel ontologies. It is Venturi’s hybrid, the form interpreted, the contradiction manifest. It is the outcome of absurdity.

8 9 10

Venturi, Robert, Complexity and Contradiction, 22. Frascari, Marco, Monsters of Architecture, 84. Ibid., 13.

absurd realism

II I had begun to cherish words excessively for the space they allowed around them. andre breton, Nadja

movements + methods manifestations of absurdity and their applicability to architecture

movements

movements + methods

Giorgio de Chirico was the founder of the metaphysical school of painting that heavily influenced surrealist art, The Disquieting Muses (1916)

Surrealism

Surrealism is the art movement that flourished in the decades between the two world wars. Primarily concerned with the liberation of human desire from the hegemony of rationality and its restrictive structures, Surrealism sought the world of dreams and fantasy buried behind. It was a reaction to the stringencies of modernity, a derivative of Dada that roundly rejected linear logic as the underlying cause of WWI. The term surréalisme (beyond realism) was used by André Breton in a 1924 manifesto for the movement in which he states that “logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest.”1 The problems of primary interest for the movement dealt with the “constellations of associative meanings,” the multiplicity of possible readings. As described by Mary Ann Caws in The Art of Interference, the “plural meaning” and the “scope of interpretation” were the matter of surrealism.2 It was for this purpose that Breton desired “to stop imposing the conscious rhythm of [his] thought” on his work. Through automatic writing, the technique of “entrusting to the hand the responsibility of writing as fast as possible what the head itself ignores”3 he sought to divorce his intentions from the final product in order to leave open as many readings as possible. In his manifesto, Breton describes the “extreme degree of immediate absurdity” that resulted from a first reading of his works of automatic writing. Breton maintains, however that the 1 2 3

Breton, Andre, “Surrealist Manifesto,” 10. Caws, Mary Ann, Art of Interference, 72. Barthes, Roland, “Death of the Author,” 51.

movements + methods

Salvador Dalí’s Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate (1944) plays with expected context to create a multitude of readings

value of absurdity lies in its ability “to give way to everything admissible, everything legitimate in the world: the disclosure of a certain number of properties and of facts no less objective, in the final analysis, than the others.”4 He is referring to the plurality of meaning which absurdity allows – each, as he says, as legitimate as the next. This play on the elasticity of meaning was a common thread among artists of the movement, a response to the seemingly rigid system of cataloged facts that categorized modern life. Salvador Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method, discussed by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York, was a “systematic objectification of delirious associations and interpretations,” in which “false facts and fabricated evidences are generated simply through the act of interpretation.”5 In Dalí’s famous painting Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening two tigers emerge from the mouth of a goldfish which emerges from a pomegranate. A bayonet is poised above the throat of a sleeping woman who levitates above a rock floating in a seascape. In the distance a stilt-legged elephant transports an obelisk across the scene. It was the juxtaposition of so many disparate elements that allowed many meanings to be read. Even knowing Dalí himself explained the image as “the consequence of the instantaneousness of a chance event which causes the sleeper to wake up”6 one can still read a myriad of meanings into the painting. 4 5 6

Breton, Andre, “Surrealist Manifesto,” 18 Koolhaas, Rem, “Dali and Le Corbusier,” 153. Interview with Salvador Dali, 1962.

movements + methods

Automatism is not the only method used by the Surrealists to disturb the accepted order and prompt interpretation. Caws described six devices of what she terms “interference” used in surrealist imagery: contradiction, displacement, insertion, partition, repetition, and fantastic focus. The first “involves the reader in a pattern of contrary attractions, leaving the present open [through] the vibrations of the contrary signs;” the second is an expectation postponed or transposed; the third is the introduction of an object into a context foreign to it; the fourth is “the technique of splitting up an image traditionally considered a whole into its parts;” the fifth is an accumulation of repeated elements that serve to emphasize a point; the sixth is “when the surrealist sight zooms in to focus on a salient detail.”7 Caws illustrates each device with a painting by René Magritte. In Les Vacances de Hegel a full glass of water is poised atop an open umbrella. It is the contrariness of catching and holding what one is being protected from that “upsets singleness of mind and linearity of reading, and is thus a vacation from logical thought.” These six devices manipulate the symbol, or the framework upon which logical thought is based. Surrealist art played with this framework of associations, and operated on the principle that, as Frederic Jameson describes, “symbolic meaning is as volatile as the arbitrariness of the sign, and associated ideas are subject to change.”8 7 8

Caws, Mary Ann, The Art of Interference, 87-95. Jameson, Frederic, “Is Space Political?” 244.

movements + methods

in Rene Magritte’s Golconda (1953) the apparent defiance of gravity offsets the familiarity of the bowler-hatted figure and background row houses

Surrealist excursions into the realm of architecture were few – “the principle of reality was always a bitter encounter for the Surrealists” who dealt more in objects than space. Neither was the architecture of the time “ready to explore the spaces of the unconscious, too busy, as it were, discovering new formal or technological breakthroughs.”9 This apparent distance prevented cross-pollination from occurring. In 1978, however, AD: Architectural Design published an issue entirely dedicated to the subject of “Surrealism and Architecture.” The issue was edited by Dalibor Veseley and contained essays by Kenneth Frampton, Bernard Tschumi, and Rem Koolhaas, among others. In his introduction Veseley makes the connection between Surrealism and hermeneutic phenomenology, pointing out that “the analogy between surrealist poetic interpretation and phenomenological interpretation is nothing less than striking.” The hinge, for Veseley, is the idea of poetic analogy which, he says, “can be extended to any reality, not only to poetry, painting, sculpture and different objects, but also to architecture.” Poetic analogy removes the object from its expected meanings.This was the manner in which the surrealists played with associations.

Tschumi, Bernard, “Architecture and its Double,” 111.

movements + methods

Kazuo Shiraga wrestles with a mixture of drying plaster and cement in a piece titled Challenging Mud (1955), both as performance and as material exploration

Gutai

The Gutai movement began in Japan in 1953. In a 1956 manifesto, Jiro Yoshihara summons artists to “the search for an original, undiscovered world,” a world that is “not bound by the previously predominant forms.”10 It was a close cousin to abstract expressionism, having referenced in their manifesto Jackson Pollock, as well as Michel Tapié and Georges Mathieu of the equivalent European movement, Taschisme.The Gutai worked in many mediums besides abstract painting by staging theatrical events, and incorporating new technologies into installations. Just as the Surrealists would utilize the subconscious mind as mediator and purveyor of unfamiliar forms, so the Gutai proposed to interact with the properties of the materials themselves in a kind of “automatism [that] naturally made the image which did not occur to us.”11 In the manifesto, Yoshihara differentiates the Gutai from Surrealism in that “the artists tend not to give [the artworks] titles or to provide interpretations,” thus distancing the author from the work even further. Yoshihara mentions several members of the group and describes their divergent processes from “art felt with the whole body” to clothing made out of light bulbs. Across all Gutai work there was an emphasis on discovery, experimentation, and the unauthored result. The resulting works contained that sense of dissonance, of the absurd, which characterized Surrealism as well: Kazuo Shiraga, 10 11

Yoshihara, Jiro, “Gutai Manifesto,” 1. Ibid., 2.

movements + methods

for instance, wrestled with a mixture of wall plaster and cement in a piece titled Challenging Mud. Shiraga was best known for his foot paintings, however. In a 1957 show, Shiraga dressed in a red Pinocchio suit, suspended himself by a rope from the ceiling of a gallery in Osaka and, dangling in space, began to kick oil paint around on a piece of paper lying on the floor. In another performance piece descriptively titled “Paper Break Through,” artist Saburo Murakami stretched forty-two layers of paper over several canvas frames and violently burst through all of them. In a 1956 work, Tanaka Atsuko created the Electric Dress, a costume of colored light bulbs which she would wear to exhibitions. The strangeness of the piece, and the apparent lack of immediate purpose elicited speculation as to its meaning, ranging from an arrangement that expresses the body’s nervous system, to a symbol of post-war Japan’s rapid transformation and urbanization.12

Tiampo, Ming, Gutai: Splendid Playground, 192.

movements + methods

a garment made of light bulbs, Atsuko Tanaka’s Electric Dress (1956) acquires many meanings

The Gutai sought to “combine human creative ability with the characteristics of the material.” They relied on the properties of the materials to mediate between the individual’s abilities and the final work in a “melting-pot of psychic automatism” through which they found “the shape of space still unknown to [them], never before seen or experienced.” Their processes were highly experimental, based on untested ideas or techniques not yet established, and demanding “the immediate revelation of anything arising spontaneously.”13 By exploring uncharted methods, the Gutai attempted to inhibit the artist’s ability to fully predict the results, thus divorcing artist from meaning. Unlike the Surrealists’ enigmatic titles, the Gutai would use very straightforward designations, leaving any further interpretation to the audience. Though Gutai art did not deal directly in architecture, the work preoccupied itself with properties of materials and space. In all Gutai painting, one of the central ideas was that the material must speak for itself, rather than as a medium through which an illusion is created. In terms of space, such a piece as Shiraga’s Please Come In, a set of poles comprising a conical structure set up on the beach of Ashiya, declared occupation. In Shiraga’s White Board, a cracked plank across which visitors were invited to step caused the experience of fragility associated with uncertain ground. Even Gutai paintings were highly physical, both in their creation and their experience. 13

Yoshihara, Jiro, “Manifesto Gutai,” 1.

movements + methods

upside-down goggles, worn as part of Experience (2011), Carsten Höller’s exhibit at the New Museum, intend to disorient the participant

Relational Art

The art practice now referred to as Relational Aesthetics is first described by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud in Esthétique Relationnelle as a contemporary method of art making that has at its horizon interpretation and shared experience. Bourriaud references primarily artists’ work from the 1980s and 90s, though similar experimentation has been ongoing since the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. The artist sets up a platform or a scenario in which the participants observe themselves and each other and their reactions and interactions become the focus of the piece. The purpose of the artist is to set up the common platform for creating encounters.The author is not the designator of meaning, but rather meaning is created through the dialogue that follows the presentation of the work. Relational art creates an “arena of exchange” to be judged based on the coherence of form, the symbolic value of the world it suggests, and the image of human relations it reflects.14 The “arenas of exchange” or the constructs of relational art often possess qualities of absurdity for the purpose of modifying or highlighting behavior. Relational art processes the way in which we inhabit the world, and relies on chance encounter to create meaning. This meaning comes into being from the “deviation” and random encounter of two previously parallel elements. The meaning of relational art cannot be isolated in its material composition, but must be seen as “a linking element, a dynamic 14

Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, 18.

movements + methods

agglutination.”15 The construct, then, is the catalyst for this agglutination, for these encounters. Ann Hamiton’s 2012 multisensory installation at the Park Avenue Armory, The Event of a Thread, employed a white curtain, hung seventy feet, separating the two halves of the room to which were attached swings large enough to seat two people. The swings would move, and pull the curtain. The billowing of the curtain caused by the swinging of dozens of human beings was intended to “illuminate the experience of the singular and collective body.”16 Simultaneously, two readers at the western end of the hall addressed a flock of pigeons, while a single writer at the eastern end addressed anything he or she felt like in a letter. Throughout the hall there were radios broadcasting the readings from movable paper bags. At the end of the day the pigeons were released into the hall as a vocalist sang from a balcony. As described in her statement, the piece was about crossings, about connections, and about how “no two voices are alike [and thus] no event is ever the same.”17 At a recent exhibition at the New Museum, artist Carsten Höller created installations that purposefully challenged the reader’s conception of space. Besides the corkscrewing metal slide that would take visitors from the fourth to the second floor of the museum (and for which the museum cut holes in their floor slabs), the exhibit consisted of a sensory deprivation tank, upside-down 15 16 17

Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, 21. “Ann Hamilton: The Event of a Thread,” 2014, www.armoryonpark.org. Hamilton, Ann, “The Event of a Thread,” 2.

movements + methods

Ann Hamilton’s The Event of a Thread (2011) installation at the Park Avenue Armory involves the audience in the art piece: the curtain billows as the participants swing

goggles, strobe lights, and a mirrored carousel. Höller utilized the absurd as “an invitation to re-imagine the way in which we move through the world.”18 Besides the slide installations for which he is well known he has also created Flying Machine, a steel, wood, and PVC contraption to which the participant is strapped by a paragliding harness and spun around by an electric motor, as well as more than one carousel. His work is described as “quasiscientific experimentation that, by affecting altered states of perception, causes participants to question their relationship to their surroundings.”19 Relational art deals naturally in the medium of architecture because encounters require space. In a lecture at Ohio State University, Hamilton describes her work as “making installations that find their form as they meet architecture.”20 In one of her pieces, Hamilton worked with Jensen & Macy Architects on a tower. An object in the landscape, the 80 foot concrete tower contains a double helical staircase that ascends and descends from opposite sides of the tower “to spatially suspend the audience and performer in an alternative to a traditional face to face performance.” Vocal and instrumental performances are regularly held there. Höller’s work also deals with spatial configurations and the experience of the body in space. 18 19 20

“Carsten Höller: Experience,” 2014, www.newmuseum.org. “The Unilever Series: Carsten Höller: Test site,” 2014, www.tate.org.uk Hamilton, Ann, “On Recent Works,” 2014, www.youtube.com

movements + methods

methods

disjoint Les Vacances de Hegel, RenĂŠ Magritte

distortion Melting Clocks, Salvador DalĂ

movements + methods

contradiction manifested as disjoint and distortion by the main elements of two surrealist paintings

Disjoint and Distortion

The three movements discussed in the previous section address contradiction. Their approaches fall into two categories: distortion, and disjunction. Distortion is a manipulation of the object itself, disjunction is a manipulation of its context. In Complexity and Contradiction, Robert Venturi discusses these two manifestations of contradiction as the contradiction adapted, and the contradiction juxtaposed. The adaptation involves distortion where the juxtaposition involves disjunction.The adaptation is the “kid glove treatment” where the juxtaposition “involves shock treatment.”21 Where adaptation requires the “disintegration of the prototype,” juxtaposition “contains violent contrasts and uncompromising oppositions.”22 In Venturi’s dozens of examples, the question appears to be one of subtlety. For Venturi, a variation in window size and scale in McKim, Mead, and White’s otherwise symmetrical Low House represents the contradiction adapted, while the frenzied facade of Frank Furness’s Clearing House represents the contradiction juxtaposed. In the art movements analyzed above, it is not so much a question of subtlety as a question of approach. Distortion is apparent in works such as Salvador Dalí’s famous Melting Clocks, or any of Carsten Höller’s experiential adventures that manipulate the manner in which the body perceives space. Disjunction is present in, for example, Atsuko Tanaka’s Electric Dress, or René 21 22

Venturi, Robert, Complexity and Contradiction, 60. Ibid., 54.

movements + methods

disjoint Clearing House, Frank Furness

distortion Low House, McKim, Mead, and White

movements + methods

contradiction manifested formally in two of Robert Venturi’s many case studies shown in Complexity and Contradiction

Magritte’s Les Vacances de Hegel. In all works there is a measure of ambiguity in relation to the final signification that allows interpretation to occur. Ambiguity, as well as tension, Venturi argues, are natural to complexity of meaning.23 In their recent publication, Ambiguous Spaces, the office of Naja and DeOstos describe how “enigmatic spaces, where opposite logics coexist and where obscure meanings appear, turn interpretation into the paramount architectural experience.”24 The coexistence of opposite logics indicates disjoint, juxtaposition. The appearance of obscure meanings implies distortion, adaptation – a coming into being or metamorphosis. Where Venturi’s investigation focuses on formal contradictions, Naja and DeOstos’s ambiguity can be found in their approach to programming. Their projects are scripted around controversial or unlikely starting points, from which they seek out cultural or mythical nuances with the intention to “expose the absurdities and contradictions”25 of the scenario. In the project titled Nuclear Breeding they begin with an unusual site, the former nuclear test facility at Orford Ness in southeast England now turned nature reserve. They studied the effects of nuclear bomb blasts on landscape, scripted a narrative around the site, and constructed characters and machines to appropriate the territory for farming. Narrative is used as a distortion tool, to set up a 23 24 25

Venturi, Robert, Complexity and Contradiction, 29. Naja and deOstos, Ambiguous Spaces, 15. Ibid., 17.

movements + methods

disjoint occupiable walls/ unoccupiable void

movements + methods

distortion monolithic/â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;manylithicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; construction

contradiction manifested in the construction and spatial organization of the Pozzo di San Patrizio in Orvieto as described by Mary-Ann Ray in Seven Partly Underground Rooms for Water Ice and Midgets

fictional platform which “opens up fissures that allow for a kind of tantalized examination.”26 The program that follows contains a paradox apparent in the title. In Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings, Mary-Ann Ray explores Roman ruins that contain contradiction in the construction and spatial arrangement. The first is the Pozzo di San Patrizio in Orvieto, a well built to supply the city with water during times of siege. Ray describes three contradictions present within this structure: the void center is unoccupiable while the circulation occurs in the walls themselves; half the well is carved from the a layer of volcanic tufa, the other half is made of brick in soft soil – it is part monolithic, part ‘manylithic;’ as it sits on the edge of a cliff, the monolithic half of the well was carved from the top down while the brick was laid from the bottom up.27 Disjoint is manifested in the spatial contradiction of unoccupied void/occupied wall; distortion is manifested in the hybrid construction method. As well as being characteristic of the final work, disjoint and distortion can also be present in the design process.The process of montage, in which the objects sampled retain their original form, is a process of disjoint. The process of collage, in which the objects sampled lose their original form, is a process of distortion. Architectural historian and theorist K. Michael Hays writes about anatopism in John Hejduk’s masques,28 that is the 26 27 28

Naja and deOstos, Ambiguous Spaces, 34. Ray, Mary-Ann, Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings, 19-22. Hays, K. Michael, Architecture’s Desire, 121.

movements + methods

disjoint montage

distortion collage

movements + methods

disjoint as montage, elements retain original form; distortion as collage, elements lose original form

quality of being out of place, or in disjunction with their context. The objects themselves, as in The Lancaster/Hanover Masque are amalgamations of familiar pieces composed in unfamiliar ways. The “Widow’s House,” for example, incorporates trombone funnels on the roof of the box-like structure to amplify the widow’s wailing.29 These are objects we recognize, and yet they are deployed for a strange purpose, thus reading as disjoint. Architect and artist Ben Nicholson writes that collage “seems to refer to a group of ephemeral things brought together by a logic that disturbs the status of the individual elements.”30 In Nicholson’s Appliance House, a project designed through collage, objects lose their original meaning. This is reinforced by the fact that the final images are not collages but drawings in graphite: the initial elements of the collage have been entirely subsumed by the final work. Thus, contradiction, or absurdity, is manifested as disjoint or distortion, or as Venturi describes, contradiction juxtaposed or adapted. It manifests itself formally, shown by Venturi’s historic examples, and programmatically, exhibited in the work of Naja and DeOstos. It can be present in the processes of construction, as explored by Ray, as well as in the design process, as demonstrated by Nicholson and Hejduk. Contradiction pervades.

29 30

Hejduk, John, Lancaster/Hanover Masque, 66. Nicholson, Ben, Appliance House, 16.

movements + methods

disjoint Le PĂ¨lerin, Rene Magritte

movements + methods

distortion Self Portrait, Egon Schiele

movements + methods

III Contradiction juxtaposed is unbending. It contains violent contrasts and uncompromising oppositions and ends in a whole which is perhaps unresolved.

disjoint: site + program amusement park above operating rail classification yard

SITE

disjoint: site + program

PROGram

disjoint: site + program

contradiction

disjoint: site + program

The CSX Corporation is one of eight Class I rail transportation suppliers in the country. It operates east of the Mississippi River on a network comprising approximately 21,000 route-miles of rail, serving major metro areas in twenty-three states. CSX operates an average of 1,350 trains per day, and transports more than six million carloads of products and raw materials a year. The products transported range from coal and new energy sources, such as biodiesel and ethanol, to automobiles, chemicals, military equipment and consumer products. The Queensgate yard is one of the thirty-six key yards operated by CSX. These serve as sorting facilities in which rail cars are received, inspected, and routed to their destinations. They also operate intermodal facilities that connect rail freight to other types of shipping. Besides the receiving and classification tracks, the yard houses a locomotive shop, a car shop, and the regional engineering department. In his essay, “Junkspace,” Rem Koolhaas describes the spaces sacrificed to the endless production-consumption-waste cycle that pervades our social system. These spaces are auxiliary and generally remain unconsidered, invisible to the public consciousness despite their ubiquity. The yard is one such space. It is occupies an area of land equivalent to Cincinnati’s central business district, within walking distance of the downtown, and yet few people are aware of its existence.

disjoint: site + program

counterpoint

The amusement park is the counterpoint to the rail yard. The typology evolved from European fairs, as well as from pleasure gardens and world expos. These spaces have always been where the public could spend their surplus wages and leisure time on entertainment. As the public became more affluent, amusement parks became more popular. The amusement park is a space of consumption, the rail yard facilitates consumption. Even in its earliest manifestations the amusement park has entertained in the form of strangeness. At fairgrounds the public was able to view freak shows, acrobatic acts, and exotic animals. As mechanical rides were introduced, these continued to provide novel experiences. The first steel Ferris Wheel built for the 1893 Chicago Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Expo allowed riders to see the fair from a height of 264 feet; the famous Coney Island Parachute Jump gave participants the experience of a free fall. An amusement park above the train yard would provide the sense of novelty modern amusement parks seek in ever bigger and faster rides by the incongruity of its context.The highly visible nature of the amusement park would manifest the paradox that is â&#x20AC;&#x153;junkspace.â&#x20AC;? Three rides would operate above the tracks: an elevator, an observation wheel, and a carousel. The movement of these rides would intend not to thrill the participant, but to give him a disjointed experience of the site as well as of the amusement park typology.

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elevator tower

1 CN Tower, Toronto

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observation wheel

2 Millennium Wheel, London

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suspended carousel

3 Wave Swinger, Chicago

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IV Contradiction adapted is tolerant and pliable. It admits improvisation. It involves the disintegration of a prototype and it ends in approximation and a whole which is perhaps impure.

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The design for an amusement park above the CSX Queensgate rail yard seeks two types of distortion. The first is the distortion of the site experience through the movement of the rides. The second is the distortion of the rides themselves and the development of a hybrid language that compromises both the amusement park typology as well as the rail yard typology. Two exercises engage distortion. The first begins with mapping and ends with a tectonic language.The first set of maps is designed after Mario Gandelsonasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Analytic Drawings of Boston,â&#x20AC;? and explores the existing distortion of the grid by the train yards. The first maps were crumpled forming the second set. These were then distilled to tectonic forms. The second exercise begins with analyzing the movement of the rides themselves and explores the manner in which their motion distorts perception. Four spaces encountered on the site are aligned with each movement and deformed through the collage of three views that result from the movement analysis. The rapid overlaying of spatial experiences is the distortion that results from the movement of the rides. The drawings resulting from these two exercises are explorations in the processes of distortion and inform the configuration of the final design. Sketches of the final design are developed in the last section of this chapter.

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A set of maps explores the manner in which the city grid was initially distorted by the construction of the rail yards.

The maps are crumpled causing new adjacencies to occur within a strange topography of hills and valleys.

Tectonic forms are distilled from the maps which inform the formal language of the amusement park.

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Four detail spaces from the site are chosen from a previously created inventory for the existing language they exhibit.

The movement of each ride is analyzed through path, distance from object, and view of object.

A sequence of views is created for each space based on the movement analyses.These views are distorted through collage.

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TWO STORIES with parallel structures and questionable architectural value in which a concept was distilled ad absurdum

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we have added nothing

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thanks to Aarati, for patience Udo, for teaching me to resolve a story Jaron, for sharing taste Alo, for sharing words Scav, for sharing Shklovsky Kegan, for encouragement Mama and Papa, for everything

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Barthes, Roland. “Death of the Author,” in The Rustle of Language, translated by Richard Howard, 49-55. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1989. Cook, Peter. Morphosis: Buildings and Projects. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, 1989. Frascari, Marco. Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991. Hayes, K. Michael. Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. Huberman, Anthony. For The Blind Man In The Dark Room Looking For The Black Cat That Isn’t There. St. Louis, MO: Contemporary Art Museum, 2009. Jameson, Frederic. “Is Space Political?” In Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach, 242-255. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997.

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bibliography

Koolhaas, Rem. “Junkspace” October 100. (Spring, 2002): 175-190. Krauss, Rosalind E., and Yves-Alain Bois. Formless: A User’s Guide. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1997. Meredith, Michael. “For the Absurd.” Log 22. (Summer 2011): 7-15. Ray, Mary-Ann. Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings for Water, Ice and Midgets. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation, and Other Essays. New York, NY: Dell Publishing, 1979. Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 1968. Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992.

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Movements Bourriaud, Nicholas. Relational Aesthetics. France: Les Presse Du Reel, 1998. Breton, André. “Manifesto of Surrealism.” 1924. Caws, Mary Ann. Art of Interference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Hamilton, Ann. “The Event of a Thread.” Accessed March 29, 2014. www.annhamiltonstudio.com. Holler, Carsten. Experience. New York, NY: New Museum, 2011. Koolhaas, Rem. “Dali and Le Corbusier” AD: Architectural Design 48 (1978): 152-163. Mical, Thomas, ed. Surrealism and Architecture. New York, NY: Routledge, 2005. Tiampo, Ming, and Alex Munroe. “Gutai: Splendid Playground.” New York, NY: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2013. Tschumi, Bernard. “Architecture and its Double.” AD: Architectural Design 48 (1978): 111-116. Yoshihara, Jiro. “Gutai Manifesto.” 1956.

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Precedents Darden, Douglas. Condemned Building: An Architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pre-text. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993. Hejduk, John. The Lancaster/Hanover Masque. London: Architectural Association, 1992. Lerup, Lars. Planned Assaults. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987. Naja and DeOstos. Ambiguous Spaces. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. Nicholson, Ben. Appliance House. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990. Tschumi, Bernard. Manhattan Transcripts. London: St. Martinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Press, 1982 Purini, Franco. Sette Paesaggi. Milan: Electa, 1989. Woods, Lebbeus. OneFiveFour. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989.

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iv-v. [Machine with Wishbone, Arthur Ganson] 2014 www.zmescience.com 6. [Stanley Kubric on the set of 2001 A Space Odyssey] 2014 filmjive.wordpress.com 7. [The Invisibility of Memory, Bernardi Roig] 2014, Claire Oliver www.claireoliver.com 8. [Charlie Chaplain in Modern Times] 2014 imgarcade.com 9. [Cover of Century of the Child] 2014 www.fakefake.com.br 10. [Cover of The Society of the Spectacle] 2014 glasskaar.tumblr.com 11. [Vladimir, Herb Ritts] 2014 www.herbritts.com 12. [Ohio river flood 1937] 2014 project-concern.org 13. [Solipsist, Andrew Thomas Huang] 2014 vimeo.com/37848135 16. [Architectural Aberrations, Architecure Record Vol 1-2] 2014 digitized by google

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illustrations

images by author unless otherwise cited

18-19. [Afterparty installation, MOS] 2014 pix.alaporte.net 20-21. [Malibu Beach House, Morphosis] 2014 morphopedia.com 22-23. [Unilever Series, Carsten Holler] 2014 en.wikipedia.org 25. [Wunderkammer, Nicholas di Genova] 2014 we-find-wildness.com 30. [The Disquieting Muses, Giorgio de Chirico] 2014 www.wikipaintings.org 32-33. [Awakening Caused by the Flight of a Bee, Dali] 2014 www.wikipaintings.org 34. [Les Vacance de Hegel, Reproduction Interdite, La Condition Humaine, Magritte] 2014 www.wikipaintings.org 35. [Portrait, La Dialectique, La Lecture Defanse, Magritte] 2014 www.wikipaintings.org 36. [Golconda, Magritte] 2014 www.wikipaintings.org 39. [Challenging Mud, Shiraga] 2014 4.bp.blogspot.com

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40-41. [Electric Dress, Tanaka] 2014 chantelle-spedding.blogspot.com 42-43 [Paper Break Through, Murakami] 2014 delightfullycatawampus.tumblr.com 44-45. [Please Come In, Shiraga] suzanavaz.files.wordpress.com 47. [Upside Down Goggles, Holler] 2014, Olivier Zahm purple.fr/diary 48. [Event of a Thread, Ann Hamilton] 2014, James Ewing www.ephemeralist.com 50-51. [Y, Carsten Holler] 2014, Cristina Carrillo De Albornoz www.theartnewspaper.com 62. [Le Pelerin, Magritte] 2014 www.wikipaintings.org 63. [Self Portrait, Schiele] 2014 www.wikipaintings.org 72. [CSX train yard] 2014, J. E. Landrum www.cincyrails.com 74-81. [Aerials of Queensgate rail yard], 2014 Google Earth

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82-83. [CSX yard from Hopple St viaduct] 2014, Kegan Flanderka 84-85. [CSX yard from behind Union Terminal] 2014, David Brossard commons.wikimedia.org 86-87. [CSX yard from Hump Tower] 2014, J. E. Landrum www.cincyrails.com 95. [Coney Island c. 1947] 2014 blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu 96. [CN Tower, Toronto] 2014 pl.wikipedia.org 97. [Observation tower patent drawings] 2014 digitized by google 98. [Millennium Wheel, London] 2014 www.windoweb.it 99. [Observation wheel patent drawings] 2014 digitized by google 100. [Wave Swinger, Chicago] 2014, Ron Cogswell www.flickr.com 101. [Carousel patent drawings] 2014 digitized by google

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