sensing
the maze
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
In collaboration with Troy Lacomb, Zhida Wu, and Pei Pei Yang
LUST El Raval is a vibrant haven of eclectic life surrounded by a salubrious city of prosperity. By recuperating architectures of lust lost to history, and protecting those still present, we seek to invigorate heterogeneous and paradoxical ways of living. These cultures resist the banal, rational, sterile, and instrumental views of how life is supposed to be lived. New typological inventions are deployed throughout El Raval to create an underground infrastructure of hedonist activity. Strategies of disorientation, transformation, and delay are implemented through the typological inventions to safeguard the episodic outpourings of lust. El Raval is a haven for lust, but lust is under attack from privatizing, regulating, and normalizing pressures.
SENSING THE MAZE El Raval is a maze of sensuous antichambers. Heightened arousal plays on misdirecting senses to hide marginalized pockets of exuberant sexuality. Tight scale. Obscured Views. Proximity of bodies. El Raval is a space to escape collectively performed identities and descend into the shadows of pleasure. Technologies of sound, light, and texture are appropriated from erotic venues in El Raval. Architecture becomes the collection and composition of devices. Frequencies of pleasure send vibrations through the body. Pulses of light confuse vision and clouds of mist obscure it. Textures of overcrowded abundance make
the haptic senses prime. Instead of permanent walls, soft boundaries between shifting environments create a seductive architecture. Our team proposes to appropriate the sensorial technologies and implement them in public and semi-public spaces, amplifying the disorientation of El Raval’s maze. Interventions nested between the winding streets of El Raval use confusion and heightened arousal to deter rational bourgeois, and create layers of protection and occlusion for the vulnerable communities that engage in eccentric forms of lust.
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Charles Vincent Thornton
Columbia GSAPP
LEFT
r ig h t
View of El Raval’s dense historic fabric is evidenced by a view of its rooftops. Photograph by author.
Urban Lighting Plan of El Raval. Source: Adjuntament de Barcelona.
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
Sensing the Maze
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EL RAVAL Urban Elements of Exposure and Retreat
STREETS OF SECLUSION These Streets are only one block long, perfect for avoiding main through-traffic of those trying to get by fast. With corners on either end, they also provide better opportunities to turn a corner and lose the authorities, a co-worker, or ex-boyfriend.
EXCESSIVE STREET LIGHTING These areas have been provided with abundant, even excessive amounts of street lighting. There are lanters, pole lights, doubled street lamps and triple street lamps. Avoid these areas if you do not wish to be seen. However, these lights could potentially be adapted, to se the mood.
SOFTSCAPES Areas that resist being cleaned by the city’s nightly force of industrial power hoses are preferred
venues
for
long
uninteruppted
nocturnal activities. Softscapes are also better for kneeling, laying down, or being on all fours.
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Charles Vincent Thornton
Columbia GSAPP
OUTSIDE
INSIDE
SIGNAGE / IMAGES
exterior display
traveling media
affirming interior character
FURNITURE / STORAGE
supervision station
exclusivity device
holding patrons
‘under the table’
enabling nudity
LIGHTING
shadowy alley vs. luminous street
singular vs. diffuse light
‘exotic’ fixtures
INFORMATION
MONEY
STATUS
SERVICE
PRODUCT
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
Sensing the Maze
TOP Catalogue of elements in the history of constructing desire in El Raval. Photographs from “Historia Y Leyenda Del Barrio Chino� by Paco Villar. B OT TOM Diagramming the actor network and exchanges between sex workers, bouncers, taxi drivers, club promoters, and tourists in El Raval.
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Charles Vincent Thornton
Columbia GSAPP
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
Sensing the Maze
SEX WORKERS UNITE! People have climbed over me all my life, well,
his top. These characters come to collect on
dwelled in me. They hang their laundry from my
my roof, and women appear out of the light
tall antennas and a few times I’ve seen criminals
shafts. Those steel cabinets? They actually pop-
hurtling across my rooftops. These old parapets
open, deploying strange noises, lights, and
have been dressed up now though. The
giant balloons. What happens next? Well some
antennas have been joined by mirrored steel
women start dancing, some serving drinks,
volumes, probably battery storage holding the
and a whole group of other men and women
charges of the small PV panels on their tops.
just watching. What is going on inside the
And things continue to get stranger. A new guy
giant balloons? Well, I’ll just leave that to your
next door simply moves cars up and down all
imagination.
day to nowhere. Sometimes people climb out
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Charles Vincent Thornton
Columbia GSAPP
LEFT
R IG H T
Secret lifts are installed in the light shafts of residential buildings, providing access for sex-workers to escape from the coercive system of pimps to safe apartments.
During field work, we discovered that clients contact pimps through taxi drivers. Automated car lifts provide patron access to the rooftops apart from the pimps or residential lifts.
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
pical Parking Tower Location
ONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS
Sensing the Maze
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UBER XXX ENTRANCE Sex Workers Unite!
Access Hatch
Code Protected Hatch to Rooftop
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Charles Vincent Thornton
all The rooftops become venues for pop-up erotic parties managed by a grassroots organization of current and former sex workers who can raise funds through the lucrative business.
Columbia GSAPP
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
Sensing the Maze
15
THE BALOON GOES UP Sex Workers Unite!
Light Shaft Elevators
Lift mechanisms hidden among utilities bring the women working and managing the air brothel down to safe apartments
Soft Maze
What appeares to be bed sheets hanging to dry is really a system of acoustical felt and mirrored mylar curtains
Parapet Cabinetry
Polished stainless steel cabinets line the parapets, providing fold out furniture, deployable media canopy, and inflation
Lust Baloon
Its an inflatable!
CONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS
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Charles Vincent Thornton
all The system of mirrored cabinets line the rootop parapets, blending in with the context, and facilitating access across the level changes. Inflatables are located at the upper most levels.
Columbia GSAPP
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
Sensing the Maze
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SEX ON TOP Sex Workers Unite!
Upper Deck Cabinet
Upper deck cabinets provide storage and fan mechanisms for inflatable private rooms. The bases are storage for clothes
Parapet Cabinet
Equipment, and utilities are stored in the cabinet base The face opens upwards to create a canopy, and intimate seating unfolds from inside
CONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS
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Charles Vincent Thornton
all The infrastructural cabinets provide storage for clothes, canopies to hide activity, inflatable structures, and portable mood setting equipment such as speakers and lights.
Columbia GSAPP
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
Sensing the Maze
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EVERYTHING IS PORTABLE Sex Workers Unite!
Roll Out Mylar Canopy
Ladder to Other Roofs
Ladder
Upper Parapet Cabinet
Upper deck cabinets provide storage and fan mechanisms for inflatable private rooms. The bases are storage for clothes
CONSTRUCTION DETAILS & INVENTIONS
Inflatable Air Supply
Fold-Out Seating
Clothes Storage
Speakers
Mattress
Lights
Short Term Use Beds
Lower Deck Cabinet
Equipment, and utilities are stored in the cabinet base The face opens upwards to create a canopy, and intimate seating unfolds from inside
Disco LED Lights
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Charles Vincent Thornton
Columbia GSAPP
Advanced Studio - Cristina Goberna
Sensing the Maze
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