Volume 3 - Build

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WENTWORTH ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

Wentworth Architecture review

Wentworth Architecture review is an independent student publication that presents the rich culture of Wentworth design students.

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This book was set in Din and Helvetica Neue. It was printed and bound on Rolland Paper at DS Graphics in Lowell, MA.

Wentworth Architecture review: James White Joseph Meucci Kevin Conant Lucy Brown

Sam Altieri Sam Partington Sam Walusimbi

Wentworth Architecture review Wentworth Architecture review would like to acknowledge the contributions of: Wentworth Architecture Department, Wentworth Alumni Association, Wentworth Center for Community & Learning Partnerships, Wentworth Admissions Department, Wentworth Office of Student Leadership Programs, Wentworth Student Government, Boston Society of Architects, Spagnolo Gisness & Associates, and Bond Construction.

Wentworth Architecture review would not be possible without the help of: Ryan Philbin, Jesse Baiata-Nicolai, Jared Steinmark, James Jarzyniecki, Rob Trumbour, John Pyper, John Ellis, Ann Borst, Carissa Durfee, Rose Conti, Russ Pinizzotto, and DS Graphics.

All rights revert back to original artists or writers. The pieces contained herein were created to fulfill either assigned or personal projects and are intended for display purposes only. Elements or portions of featured pieces may contain borrowed materials. It is not the intention of WAr to infringe upon the rights of the original artists or the sources of the material’s origin.

war@wit.edu www.wit.edu/war Wentworth Architecture review [WAr]

550 Huntington Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5998

Introduction The Architect's Voice Before the House Un-Build Build Scenes

Episode I Prelude, Continuum

Connections Two Connections

Episode II Time for Building

Installation An Appropriation of Means Distort Windows

Episode III ZEITGEIST! On Why We Fight

Diverge A Place to Dance Ghosts Re:reading Heidegger

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18-23 24-31 32-39 40-47 48-53 54-65

Community Design Studio

66-91

Notes

64-65 90

^ James Jarzyniecki | Underpass Sketch

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The Architect's Voice Kevin Conant

It is early. No, it is very early, on a rather frigid November morning.

Yet you, reader, do not know this, for you are not here. You have no knowledge of the fatigue that plagues my eyes at this very moment, nor the sound of the brisk autumnal breeze rustling the golden beech leaves outside of my window. And yet, you do know, for I just told you, without being in your presence. Though we are separated by both time and space, you are reading the thoughts that I am writing, and understanding what I have been thinking without me speaking a single word to you. We have unwittingly and tacitly engaged in conversation. Some might call that telepathy.1 This phenomenon of telepathic expression lies at the very heart of architecture. Instead of diction and syntax, however, the architect employs spatial volume and planar surface to do his bidding. Where the author sketches out paragraphs through the combination of nouns and verbs, lines and shapes are the architect’s mode of conveyance.

From the initial dinner napkin parti sketch to the final construction drawings, architecture, as a graphical profession, is dependent upon the materialization of conceptual ideas through the medium of drawing which is then implicitly relayed to another individual. The architect composes drawings which are two-dimensional, concrete manifestations of his thoughts and gives them to a contractor, who then reads the drawings and understands them without a further word from the architect (this is of course operating under the idealistic generalization that we have excluded the finer intricacies of this professional relationship such as RFIs and submittals, however I like to believe the point is made). Much like the author and his reader, the architect and his builder have engaged in a telepathic conversation.

strike and ignite itself upon a worn brick wall like flint on steel are all three-dimensional, tangible manifestations of an architect’s mind, and you are feeling them, experiencing them. You have once again unwittingly engaged in a dialogue, yet this time the conversation is three dimensional.

This phenomenon of telepathic expression lies at the very heart of architecture. Instead of diction and syntax, the architect employs lines and forms to do his bidding.

It is now only early. It is still frigid, I am still tired, and it is certainly still November, but nonetheless I will pose one query. If writing and drawing is the act through which we two-dimensionally transfer our ideas telepathically, what then is the medium or act to achieve this three-dimensional telepathy? The answer is simple, dear reader. To have someone engage experientially and inhabit our thoughts, we need do only one thing. And that is to simply…build.

However, the analogy between the author and the architect dissolves here, for the author’s works and ideas are destined to remain forever interned to the two-dimensionality of the page. The architect’s work, meanwhile, can be liberated, and his concepts personified. Unlike the author whose telepathy can only be engaged with the visual, the architect’s thoughts can be experienced and inhabited, ultimately activating all of the senses. The way in which you slow down when walking upon the worn granite of cobblestones because of its uneven surface, or the way light streams through a clearstory window to

1 Stephen King would be one such person, for in his pedagogical novel On Writing he referred to writing as “an act of telepathy.” King, Stephen. On writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner, 2000. pg 97-98

Before The House Anonymous

Remember! I am not a storyteller, but I am going to indulge you in one. Let us for a moment imagine that: Before the house1 sits an architect. To this architect comes a woman from the country who asks to gain entry into the house. But the architect says that he cannot grant her entry at the moment. The woman thinks about it and then asks if she will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the architect, “but not now.” At the moment the door to the house stands open, as always, and the architect walks to the side, so the woman stoops over in order to see through the door into the interior. When the architect notices, he laughs and says, “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my veto.

But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the easiest architect.

But from room to room stand architects, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The woman from the country has not expected such difficulties; the house should always be accessible for everyone, she thinks, but as she now looks more closely at the architect in his all black outfit, at his large rounded glasses and his shiny, pale bald head, she decides that it would be better to wait until she gets permission to go inside.

The architect gives her a stool and allows her to sit down at the side in front of the door. There she sits for days and years. She makes many attempts to be let in, and she wears the architect out with her requests. The architect often interrogates her briefly, questioning her about her homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men pose, and at the end he always tells her once more that he cannot let her inside yet. The woman, who has equipped herself with many things for her journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the architect. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the woman observes the architect continuously. She forgets the other architects, and this one seems to her the only obstacle for entry into the house. She curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, but later, as she grows old, she mumbles to herself. She becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the architect she has come to know the stains in his black outfit, she even asks the stains to help her persuade the architect. Finally her eyesight grows weak, and she does not know whether things are

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really darker around her or whether her eyes are merely deceiving her. But she recognizes now in the darkness an illumination, which breaks inextinguishably out of the doorway to the house. Now she no longer has much time to live. Before her death she gathers in her head all her experiences of the entire time up into one question, which she has not yet put to the architect. She waves to him, since she can no longer lift up her stiffening body. The architect has to bend way down to her, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the woman. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the architect. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone attempts to gain entry into the house,” says the woman, “so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The architect sees that the woman is already dying and, in order to reach her diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at her, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m now going to close it.”

based on Franz Kafka's parable 'Before the Law' in his novel The Trial, Tribeca Books, 2011. pg. 254-256

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Un-build Joseph Meucci

Abandoned places, areas or buildings that have fallen into decay as a result of their mis-use, have a tendency to become places looked at for re-purpose. Abandoned places can be transformed or changed by simply applying a function to a place that would otherwise be unused. There is a misconception that architects can design places with permanent functions. On the contrary, architecture built without a specific function can allow the building to decay and find its permanence through improvised functions created by the user.

Thom Mayne, in his book Combinatory Urbanism, discusses the idea that designing should take on a collective approach, taking not only the physical but also the intangible contextual – cultural, political and economic – elements of the surroundings to inform a more meaningful design. Given these contextual aspects that are always in flux, it is evident that architecture, as object, must allow for flexibility of use. Mayne points out that, “The idea of urban planning as a means of controlling the growth of cities based on the prediction of future development is increasingly ineffective simply because future developments cannot, in the present volatile societal dynamics, be accurately predicted.“1 In the technological world in which we live, where our societal and cultural needs change so fast, permanence is hard to plan for. A better approach to design is to build for abandonment, to allow for a mis-use of the space.

What is interesting is that objects (buildings) that we tend to see as familiar in our everyday life, once abandoned, can still be re-purposed with the intangible elements in mind. Anthony Vidler reflects upon the difference between the familiar and unfamiliar stating that, “Mysteries, adding to local lore … [contributed to] the haunting (who were the original inhabitants? Why the abandonment? Why no present owner? Why no one to cultivate the field?)”2 Questions that culminate, when the familiar is unrecognizable, create a constant interaction between the user and the place. The function is dictated by individual interpretations that can reveal the ‘mysteries’ disguised in the space. The understanding of the object as well as its mysteries can help inform ways to build.

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Mayne, Thom, and Stan Allen. Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form. (Culver City: Stray Dog Café, 2011). pg. 9 Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny. Essays in the Modern Unhomely. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). pg. 20

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^ Rebecca Leclerc | Thesis (+ previous spread)

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Build Matthew DesSureault

The essence of the word “build� is not a descriptive process of constructing an object in space, but an experiential understanding of three-dimensional space, time, and material. In most instances we use the word build when something needs to be put together or constructed. It is usually interpreted as a mere process of assembly. On the other hand, build can be also be understood as the construction both negative and positive space. Traveling through a city and learning about its culture, one realizes something profound when they build what they have seen. You can feel the integration of the buildings as they form the pathways and open spaces of the city.

This relationship between negative space and the built forms creates an urban totality. Build becomes the process of understanding spaces and relationships far beyond what we perceive.

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Scenes Steven Hien, Bradley Taris, Nina Levins (U. Michigan)

Temporary Living in Urban China A short bike ride from the heart of the vibrant urban village Caochangdi lays the ruins of Beigao, a comparable neighborhood that was demolished by the government in 2011. In its wake stands a bustling development site for midrise housing complexes. Giant, skeletal apartment buildings rise from the ashes of what was once an intimate urban village. Through our research, we endeavor to expose the effect of this environmental change on the individual, the community, and the vitality of these urban neighborhoods.

^ Steven Hien | Photography

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Beer Delivery Man

Construction Worker

B.A.S.E.1 hosts weekly BBQ’s for which we order a large case of beer. Shi Tao, the man who delivers them every Friday morning, owns a convenience store and delivery service in Caochangdi so we asked if we could interview him. Late one night, we arrived at his shop. He offered us some cold beers and we chatted about his life.

Construction zones are not typically tourist destinations, so our foreign presence on the site garnered many curious stares. The air hung heavy with dust, sliced by the shrill whiz of machinery. We biked across dirt roads flanked by wooden scaffolding and skeletal high rises in search of a construction worker to interview for our project.

Shi Tao is from a small town three hours north of Beijing. He has been living in Caochangdi for five years and is well established in the community. During the interview, friends and customers passed in and out of the store, taking drinks without paying and marking their names on a tab behind the register. Though he is content here, he misses his family greatly. His wife and two young children still live in his hometown. He calls them every day. They visit once a year, staying for two months in the summertime and returning to grow taller in his absence.

Beyond the site lay a camp of barracks. It was evening and the area was lively with cooking, splashing, and merriment. The paneled housing was preceded by a dirt foreground that separated us from the workers. At first, they were dubious of our intentions; it took several return visits before we were able establish a relationship.

Beyond the aisles of soft drinks and snacks was a thin door that lead to Shi Tao’s sleeping quarters. One double bed protruded from beneath a teetering pile of stacked cardboard boxes. Heaps of clothing cluttered a table that also served as a cooking area and desk. A pressure cooker and a few knives comprised the kitchen; an obsolete computer monitor idled uselessly nearby. The room was lit by one lamp clipped to the top bunk and a stale odor wafted perceptibly from an unfinished bowl of soup on the table.

The space felt slightly sullied, but evidence of Shi Tao’s love of his family brightened his home. His wife’s leopard print dress hung near the door, waiting to be worn; an epic poem from his children was handwritten and mounted on the wall in place of a headboard.

Shi Tao’s story of separation in the name of labor is quintessential of a working urban villager.

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Eventually we befriended a man named Mr. Sun. Generous and open, Mr. Sun invited us into his home and served us dinner. His “home” however, is hardly that. Originally from outside the city, Mr. Sun migrated to Beijing to find a job. His profession in the village is agriculturally based so he had to learn everything about construction from the ground up. With a wife and young child at home, Mr. Sun is obligated to find sufficient work; he has no choice but to live in the migrant camp.

Mr. Sun’s on-site housing is typical of an urban construction worker. His room holds up to ten people at a time. Outfitted with only a wooden panel for a mattress, the bunk beds serve as both a place to sleep and to store belongings. They don’t own much: tools, a few clothes, a duffel, some blankets, and minimal cookware.

B.A.S.E. stands for the Beijing Architecture Studio Enterprise

Cosmetology Students

Restaurateur

We wandered down the corridors of an apartment complex near the center of Caochangdi and knocked on the first open door we encountered. Three young women lived there and were sitting on their beds surfing the Internet and relaxing when we entered.

As a local friend of Mary-Ann and Robert (B.A.S.E. Beijing), restaurant owner Jason Zhao agreed to be involved in our project.

Recently, Jason relocated from a small home near Caochangdi to a mid-rise apartment.

With a baby on the way and his in-laws living in-house, he needed to find housing that was affordable and functional, however generic it may be.

They told us they had moved in a month before after hearing about the place from a friend. From Southwest China, the three have been friends for four years and are now in cosmetology school together in Beijing. They had just returned from an extended stay in Japan and they didn’t bring much from home.

Nearly everything had been purchased upon arrival: two beds, one table, a rice cooker, and a wardrobe, all which furnished the room.

The sink in the bathroom was used to wash both dishes and laundry. A common table at the end of the hallway served as a makeshift kitchen to which each tenant had to transport their own cookware.

We asked if the communal kitchenette had helped them create a sense of community within the apartment and they replied negatively; they had not yet befriended their neighbors. The girls were very sweet in sharing their space, albeit reluctant to be photographed. Eventually, however, they acceded.

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We arrived at Jason’s apartment by taxi late one afternoon with voice recorder and camera in hand. He greeted us on the first floor and escorted us up ten flights of stairs to his apartment. He graciously offered us orange juice and we sat on his couch to converse.

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Restaurateur Jason in his small home near Caochangdi.

The design of his apartment was bland; the rooms very sparse. Hardly any misplaced objects cluttered the shelves or drawers.

The walls were white; the floor was made of flimsy wooden boards. The furnished house appeared clinical in its lack of inhabitation.

In Jason’s case, the majority of his cookware was kept in his restaurant so his kitchen was particularly minimal. Not only was his food outsourced, but his entire livelihood, it seemed. We later photographed his restaurant, Fodder Factory (a regular place for lunch). With cozy knick-knacks and art pieces, his restaurant’s aesthetic was vastly different from that of his apartment; the two do not register as belonging to the same person. As a creative human being, Jason was more at home in his restaurant than in his house.

“We are not friendly with our neighbors.

We don’t know anyone on the floor. It’s a complicated place because there are so many different kinds of people — different ages, different jobs, different reasons for being in Beijing.”

Tian Zhen & Chen Juan

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Taxi Driver

Dollar Store Owner

In the evenings in Caochangdi, taxi drivers can be seen unbuttoning their yellow uniforms and drinking beers with their comrades. After a long shift, they stroll the streets instead of driving, stretching their legs and unwinding from the city rush. Before they can relax, however, a changing of the keys must occur as a second wave of taxi drivers take to the roads.

As semi-permanent members of Caochangdi, we became familiar with the vendors and merchants we visited regularly. Among them is Xiao Yi, a hard working migrant from Southern China. He and his wife run a small convenience store in the center of Caochangdi, selling everything from chopsticks to luggage. Together they sleep in the storage room of their shop, accompanied by his mother and their two-year-old son who live just next door.

A common pattern for these particular migrant laborers is to share both a room and a car with a partner. While one is driving, the other is sleeping and vice versa.

The rooms they share are tiny, measuring three by five meters. Whole apartment buildings stacked with these rooms act as dormitories for taxi drivers. The streets below are lined with idle yellow cars as their drivers sleep off the night shift.

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Tea canister and thermos from Taxi Driver apartment.

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We wanted to uncover the insides of these rooms- and lives- so we entered the building and explored the halls. Our timing was perfect: we encountered a taxi driver just as he was exchanging keys with his roommate.

Mr. X invited us inside and we talked at length about his life as a driver, his experience of learning a new city as a migrant, and what it's like to live in a room that is only used for sleep.

Mr. X was a very hospitable man who was happy to oblige when asked for an interview.

It was cut short, however, because the nightshift was beginning and he had to hit the road. At the end of our exchange, he kindly drove us back to the studio in his cab, free of charge.

When we arrived to interview the family, it was lunchtime, and the shopkeepers were eating stir-fried rice behind the register as though they were in their living room. We followed the mother down a hallway next door. She used a keycard to swipe into a dimly-lit entryway. In the back were two rooms facing each other. The cramped space contained a rice cooker and hot plate, a washing machine and a toilet. The bathroom was separated from the makeshift kitchen only by a flimsy shower door. On a shelf above the "stove," where spices are usually found, sat a cup and toothbrush- evidence of the de-compartmentalization of their condensed space.

The opposing room served as both a storage and sleeping unit. One bed jutted out from beneath a towering heap of belongings. Slits in the stacks of boxes served as drawers out into which tools and toys were visibly tucked.

The room was uncomfortably crowded; we could not open the door fully and there was barely enough space for two bodies to move.

The mother was warm and open in sharing her space. Since the interview, we have returned to buy goods from their store and continue the friendship we established with Xiao Yi and his family.

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Conversation with Shopkeepers, Beigao, Beijing B.A.S.E.: Where do you keep all of your things for storage?

Mother: My room is for storage.

B.A.S.E.: So when you cook and eat, do you eat all together?

M: We eat in the store.

B.A.S.E.: Everything in the store?

M: Yes. We don’t have a table; we just sit and eat there.

B.A.S.E.: Do you like living here?

M: I want to go home.

B.A.S.E.: Is that an option?

M: No, because we have a three year contract with this storefront.

So for the next three years, if things go well we will stay here. My son and his wife are very busy and so I have to stay here and take care of the kids.

B.A.S.E.: What things in here are for storage and what are your personal belongings?

Xiao Yi: [laughs] Almost all storage. We go into the other building every morning to get ready and clean up.

B.A.S.E.: What do you use for a shower?

XY: Sometimes I go to the public bath; they have single rooms but it’s also a social part of Beijing culture. Most of the time I wash in the little bathroom [the one near the grandmother’s and baby’s bedroom]. It’s more comfortable to bathe in public though.

B.A.S.E.: Do you have any closets for your clothes?

XY: [laughs] We don’t have closets, just clothes in bags. I’m from the South. We dress nice no matter rich or not rich.

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Temporary Living in Urban China (B.A.S.E. Loft) Steven Hien, Bao Nguyen , Mike Morris, Bryan Madrigal, Bradley Taris, Joshua Harks (U.Chicago)

A room near the front of the studio was vacant so Robert and MaryAnn (B.A.S.E. Beijing) rented it out to us. Double doors opened to a large space, flanked by two smaller rooms, one with a sink and toilette and one with a bathtub. A ladder near the shower ascended to a nook upstairs, which looked out into the main living area. With its rough walls and dusty ceilings, the loft was in bad condition. In order to make it livable, we had to construct the interior from the ground up. At the beginning of the summer, it wasn’t much, but it held great potential for becoming something spectacular.

First, we assembled scaffolding, scraped and sanded the walls, plastered them smooth, and painted them a clean white. We changed the light bulbs, wiped the mini fridge, fixed the armoire, and set up the hot plate and propane tank that had been idling in the nook. The room already had plumbing and electricity, but the shower needed to be connected to the water line. With six pairs of working hands, it took less than a week to prepare the space for furnishing.

Using preexisting tables and bunks from the studio, we assembled shelving and three beds. We still needed mattresses and bedding, however, so we purchased blankets from IKEA and padding from a local furniture vendor. The mattresses were akin to those we had seen in the migrant labor temporary housing quarters; basic, albeit comfortable.

A dollar store in Coachandi supplied us with all the household goods we needed: a shower curtain, a doormat, a rug, a stereo system and more. The decorations on the walls were products of our tourism, including traditional hand-held fans from The Dirt Market as well as an unlikely sign appropriated from a local donkey-meat restaurant.

We washed our clothes at a local Laundromat and hung them to dry wherever we could find space: on the roof, from the top bunk, or in the nook upstairs that stored our empty baggage. The entire operation cost approximately 3,000 kuai. In no time at all, our space and our lives had become quite comfortable.

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^ Danielle Gray | Bicycle Table

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^Julie Bruton (BIND) | Concrete Table

Prelude Once there was everything. I walked towards the horizon away from nothing. The planes encompassing me pulled me to their collision, where I would meet them. I would welcome them into my world, and embrace their companionship.

As I grew closer, yet seemed farther from their intersection, I breathed a scent none had inhaled before me.

There was no collision, only infinity and its sweet bouquet of possibility. The purity was beautiful, but soon I grew tired. The collision whispered, “build.�

^ Sinead Gallivan

Continuum To build is to build forever. First, uninhibitedly with our minds. We flirt with obscurity, and our eyes open to what is not. Our mind and eyes guide our hand, slowly syncing the hand with imagination.

Our hand builds over and over, until the mind, eye, and appendage are in unison. Then we speak; we communicate what is not, and build with others.

Minds, eyes, and hands like machines produce an image; a representation of what is to be. After too long and without enough time, we build again, together, still uncertain. Our machine grows. Our machine uses machines that use machines, until it is built.

After we build, we experience, applaud, use, and dwell. They walk by; they rebuild with their eyes, their minds, and with their hands. They understand-- they build.

Two Connections James Jarzyniecki

Research There are architectural spaces that move us in a particular way, evoke specific feeling, and make us feel considered. How do we make architecture with this quality? This is an architecture that connects and opens up to us. It is never instructive or overbearing; it communicates without words or signs, both swift and slow, somewhere below our active intellect. How then do we understand the spatial knowledge surrounding such an architecture? How do we then generate architecture with this knowledge? To begin, we must first understand how it is that we are connected to the spaces we inhabit and what the nature of this relationship is.

^ James Jarzyniecki | Photography [+ previous spread]

Spatial Knowledge in the Conscious Construction of Space The following works represent a lineage of philosophical thinking concerning our relation to our surroundings. The Complete Philosophical Fragments of Heraclitus introduces the attributes of pattern and continuous flow within our environment into the realm of spatial knowledge. The complexity and indefiniteness of continuous flow makes this philosophy unattractive to a humankind which is interested in separating itself from, rather than including itself in, the world of the animal, vegetable and mineral. Henri Bergson takes up this inclusive philosophy again in Time and Free Will; An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. In this essay is the inability of science and mathematics to deal with quality as well as quantity, which impairs our understanding of time, space, and in turn impairs the understanding of ourselves.

Otto Friedrich Bollnow in Human Space takes this question directly to the problem of space. He systematically describes the concept of “concrete experienced space,” collecting Aristotle, Bergson, Bachelard, Durckheim, Minkowski, Heidegger, Goethe, Binswanger, Cassier, Kant, Sartre, Proust, and Marleau-Ponty in an unprecedented one-volume work on the subject. Indebted to the aforementioned works, Olafur Eliasson synthesizes phenomena and material into artworks that seek to engage us in space. In Eliasson’s, Your Engagement Has Consequences on the Relativity of Your Reality, these experiments are reborn as theories concerning the formation of our identity.

Eliasson’s pairing of thinking and making has sparked this research and its exploration into the implications of architecture in this spatial knowledge.

Nature is flow Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher of the fifth century B.C., represents a prescientific conception of space and inscribes the advent of a seemingly modern philosophy of universal flow. A collection of maxims by William Harris1 represents his unpublished treaties On Nature. It is important to note that these maxims are quotations of Heraclitus by his later contemporaries; he disseminated knowledge through oration, rarely writing himself. What is most important of his ideas is that of flow. While his contemporaries searched for order and rationality in their surroundings, Heraclitus found pattern and change: “Everything flows and nothing abides.

Everything gives way and nothing is fixed.”2 The pattern is that of change, continuous fluctuations and shifts in roles. Nothing stays fixed in one position but is replaced as soon as it finds a place. Implied is the notion of cycle and filled void; matter in cyclical

motions taking space and making space.

Heraclitus’s idea of “everything flows” does not form a world of chaos but rather “it is in changing that things find repose.”3 Nature, for Heraclitus, finds its place in continuous flow.

As for space, Heraclitus sees our relationship to our surroundings as relative to the changing aspects of matter. He states, “you cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on.”5 The matter that we experience when stepping in a river touches us and flows past us; for Heraclitus this engagement is the river. The experience of the space is different upon our entering the river for a second time because of the interaction with new matter flowing past us. The river is distinguished from the system of river, a series of relations between matter and place, and is made specific by our interaction with it. Heraclitus’s description of the river can be seen as a metaphor and as representative of his understanding of space.

The idea of attribute, implied although not explicitly stated, is an unifying piece within Heraclitus' philosophy. It is how he places himself, and us, as the unmentioned foundation from which his ideas spring.

Attributes are how we distinguish one piece of fluctuating matter from another. He gives an atmospheric example as an instructive point: “if all existing things were smoke, it is by smell that we would distinguish them.”4 A world filled with smoke would be differentiated to those experiencing it by the specific smells of each constituent cloud.

The eminence of Heraclitus’ ideas lay directly in his introduction of flow as a basis for a metaphysic of nature, and of space in general.

This parallels the modern conception of a theory of relativity, where all matter is seen as distinct only in relation to other matter.

The similarities between his pre-scientific conception of space and our modern conception cannot be overlooked.

Time is space The French philosopher Henri Bergson takes up the heterogeneity of our relation to space in his three part extended essay refuting the theory of the determinists and positing a theory of free will.5 Bergson claims that succession is wholly within us and is not part of the objective material world, which exists only in simultaneities. Thus any predetermination would necessitate an understanding of every aspect of each moment, preceding and present, which is not possible unless through duration itself.6 The argument is split into a description of both the concepts of “intensity” and “duration”, which are then used in a pointed critique of the determinist theory, followed by a conclusion describing a theory of free will.

“Intensity” is described through an analysis of the attribution of the quantitative difference of greater or less onto internal states. If a feeling seems to us to be of greater intensity than one that is less intensive and, as such, acquires a quantitative value it is because the feeling retains a part of the external causal impression from which it springs7. It is a relationship between the ideas of feelings and the physical processes and effects of those feelings which in turn create or “intensify” the feelings allowing us to assign a magnitude to the feeling. Intensity, which is an internal state, is a series of qualitative states that we pass through that only create a “sensation of increase” where the feelings are non-extended indivisible things, combined only after the fact in abstract thought8. Here we are given a demonstration of the “sensation of increase” from a feeling of hot to cold9. As a feeling of hot moves from warm to cold it is not that the sensation is more or less but rather of a specific qualitative measure. Each qualitative state: hot, warm-hot, warm, warm-cool etc. is of a specific kind not of the same kind with a difference in magnitude only after the fact in abstract thought10.

“Duration,” as described by Bergson is “succession without distinction, or without time, a mutual penetration, an interconnection and organization of elements, each which represent a whole, and cannot be distinguished or isolated from it except by abstract thought.”11 We organize events or moments as distinct and in succession in “abstract thought” not as they exist inside ourselves as additive and interconnected but as a “mutual penetration.” This sets the distinction between time and space.

Pure space produces moments without any retention of them, making qualities not quantities. Duration becomes its representative form; time, as a homogeneous medium, by our aptitude for memory and the placing of moments in succession.

The retention of the cause of a feeling is specified as the point at which we begin to objectify space. We come into contact with the external world through our senses and each of the impressions created by this interaction blend and color one-another as a qualitative state. But it is in the retention of a piece of their cause, derived from space, that allows us to set each impression out in a homogeneous medium as quantity.12

Bergson demonstrates how we cannot return to a past moment because these moments are wholly inside of us and are not retained by the inert matter that surrounds us.13 This past moment is changed by all of the other past moments as well as the present. We are a coloring of each moment lived through and our tone and shade changes as we move through new moments; there is an interconnection inside of ourselves between

each past moment and our present self. To describe this Bergson uses the relational paradox of astronomy. Astronomy is concerned with a relation between two durations and not the interval itself. If the universe was made to spin twice as fast, none of the calculations would change. This is because it is always a relation between two bodies; our body here on earth and an astrological body moving through space.

Although the relative measurable time may not seem to change, the qualitative states we pass through will be considerably less and multitudes of impressions will be lost.14

Bergson concludes that the relation between us and our surroundings must always be a mutual dependency; that from matter we receive certain impressions and that to matter we place certain impressions. He states, “the things we see cannot be entirely our own work, they must result from a compromise between mind and matter.” medium as quantity.15

Experienced space German philosopher Otto Friedrich Bollnow systematically develops a concept of this “compromise between mind and matter” as a theory of “concrete experienced space.” Just as the differentiation of abstract mathematical time and experienced time (Bergsons’ duration), there is a distinction between abstract space of the mathematician and the physicist and the specifically experienced human space. Bollnow makes the distinction that space directly experienced in life does not coincide with mathematical space.16 “Experienced space” is space as it is present for humanity; it is not something psychological (phenomenological space) but is the actual concrete space we live in. There is a paradox we find ourselves living out everyday: we take up space, or are a part of space, and at the same time we move about in space, we are contained in space. Even though “experienced space” is not psychological it is also not an object removed from the subject, but “experienced space” is a direct relationship between the two.

Experienced space is described by the differentiation between space and place.

Spaces have the ability to be one inside the other, where as places can only be laid side by side. Bollnow connects this with the Aristotelian conception of space where space is not infinite but is always bounded and defined. If there exists empty space it is not considered and is engendered with no meaning; “space never extends further than the range of life which is to be fulfilled.”17 The etymology of space supports this theory as having been first used to describe the making of space by human activity, as in the clearing of the forest to make “space” for dwelling. It is important that in this definition the forest

before the human intervention is not space but another entity; it only becomes space by the action of the human. This space that is created inherits a specific orientation as front and back, left and right, above and below, which directly corresponds to the body in relation to space; for Bollnow this is “home.”

The “home," beyond any point of reference, is the central area of all spatial relationships.

Going away and coming back is always in reference to a point of origin.18 This “home” is an intellectual construction and this realm of thought can only exist and be understood within a foundation of spatiality. The concept of “dwelling” derives its meaning from this construction of “home” as acquiring a foothold in space, the carving a space out for oneself, where our intellectual being is positioned in space.

The horizon is specified as a part of space that is created both by ourselves and the spaces we inhabit. “The horizon belongs to a realm which cannot be assigned entirely to mankind or to the world, but includes both in their original unity.”19 The horizon is the limit of human visual perception. We are sheltered by the horizon, making a finiteness to space.

As a parallel the intellectual horizon is the limit to a system that allows an intellect to operate without becoming lost in the unregulated extension of intellectual space.

Bollnow points to Baroque architecture as an attempt to depict space as unlimited.20 Layers of sculpture and forms veil and blur the sharp definitions of a finite delineated space.

Bollnow points out that infinite space can only be represented in the interior because of the exterior condition of the horizon. The horizon in this case shapes our personal cultivation of space into something finite.

Bollnow demonstrates how space was first homogenized by roads. Roads organize and re-construct space, but also create new uncultivated space out of the landscapes they cut across, in turn homogenizing it. By exiting our own organizational system and our own system of relationships we enter the organizational system of roads and a “common series of relationships.”21 The road then imparts its indifference on the landscape within which it exists. This is contrasted with the paths taken by a wanderer and how they become a part of the landscape by their moving through it. It is here throughout the break from the “over increased purposefulness of existence” that a certain behavior in space effects the entirety of a state of mind and brings about a closer connection with our inner nature and our own spatial state. 22 It is important to note the distinction between the clearly mathematical nature of a system of roads in its quantification of the landscape, homogenizing it, and the qualitative nature of a wanderer’s path through the landscape, creating impressions and connections, making it heterogeneous and differentiated.

For Bollnow human ordering always gives a strange sense of satisfaction because the world, in the ordered area in question, has become clearly comprehensible and manageable as a result of this activity.

This is why the objectification of space is a seemingly innate activity; it satisfies a yearning to make the unmanageable manageable. The jump from our individual intellect, in its ordering of our immediate physical surroundings, is that of a spatial order as a common medium by the objectified intellect, “the shadow of the ego projecting itself into space.” 23 In this way we situate ourselves in space, not as an objective spatial position, but within a relationship to our surroundings. “Experienced space” in general, as it is modified in different circumstances, does not concern itself with artificially separated partial spaces nor with the division of the senses, but with the entire realm of the relationship as a whole.

“Experienced space” as a medium sits directly between an objective and a subjective reality. 24 It is neither dependent nor independent on a viewer. This can be more easily understood in its parallel of a different scale as the body. Our body also exists in a “paradoxical intermediate position” between subject and object.25 We are in the medium and move about in the medium.

But we are a constituent part of the medium separated not by a barrier but “connected to it and supported by it.”26 Expressed as such, “experienced space” is primary to the understanding of the human condition. As stated, we can not be separated from our spatiality without losing our individuality.

Engagement in space Olafur Eliasson, a Danish/Icelandic artist working in Berlin, in his essay on engagement, claims that even objects outside of us are never static and timeless, but more accurately of time itself. 27 His purpose is to reposition the subject within space and suggest that our engagement is a constituent of space, in turn “co-producing” the objects surrounding us.28 This is space as a “personal cultivation"; a personal space that exists in part by our engagement with it.

He pleas for the injection of temporality into material objects and that this re-focusing can bring about a new “spatial conception” pushing back against the deprivation of the “temporal aspect” in contemporary culture.29

The translation from idea to material, a process central to his studios work, is described as a “model” for this type of injection.30 An idea becomes content when it is formed in space. The specific idea is the generative element of the form and once it is placed in space it is “constantly colored” by meanings other than this given generative idea. These other meanings are paramount in the understanding of this concept.

The objective reality, which in this model could be the definition of the generative idea, is made relative by the outside meanings appropriated to the object once placed in space. This is the “formation of identity” Eliasson wishes to create.31 He believes that art has the ability to provoke the formation of identity in a cultural setting, as contrasted by one specifically defined identity. It can secure the opportunity for individuals to find themselves in a social setting rather than adhering themselves to an accepted identity.

Eliasson observes that, “architecture consists of other material than stones, concrete and steel.”32 In a statement by Richard Buckminster Fuller quoted by Eliasson, the existence of waves and oscillations, which are content in the medium of space, namely objects, are noted. 33 Eliasson adds that these waves translate from a source to cause and cause to source and that by looking at the inbetween, neither the subject nor the object, the aspect of engagement can be isolated and studied, and used as a generating principle.

Eliasson aptly states that this knowledge would add to the spatial conception of “topology,” where duration is added as a fourth dimension to the three dimensional Euclidean conception of space. Engagement would be the fifth dimension.34

Relational thinking This collection of thinkers on experienced mediums represents a linear chronology of thought built upon by thinking and making.

Heraclitus' maxim "nature is flow" can be taken as a representative piece of his contribution to the collected knowledge.

Bergson, in his "reduction of time to space", enumerates both "intensity" and "duration", which are integral to the studies of his successors. The entirety of Bollnow’s demonstration of "experienced space" is paramount to the understanding of our relation to space. The methodology of thinking and making of Eliasson and his concept of "engagement" in space puts us at the center of this spatial knowledge. Each only represents a constituent part of the collected understanding of our relationship with our surroundings.

Relational thinking / architectural thinking We are a constituent part of a continuous spatial cycle of being, effect, understanding, and construction. We exist in space, are affected by space, derive understanding from space and construct enclosure that defines space. Charged with the conscious construction of space, architecture is implicated in an understanding of the nature of this cycle and how we exist in, how we are shaped by, and how we culturally understand our surroundings.

We are shaped and colored by every environment we “move through” or “exist in.” Engaging with this spatial knowledge, architecture can reclaim its necessity in everyday life through the understanding of the connections that inherently exist in human spatiality. Each physical form, whether considered or not, plays a part in the nature of this connection. With a foundational consideration these forms and material assemblages can reclaim their essence in every situation. Moving past a foundational level, masterfully employed, this relational thinking can foster architectural environments that connect deeply to our individual being and have the power to move us. Then through our “being in” them they generate fresh modes of inhabitation where the edge between inhabitant and environment cannot be distinguished.

The spaces we make, make us The internal sensations we feel are derived from and retain a part of their cause external to us. They stem directly from a corporeal stimulus as part of our surroundings. This connection implicates architecture as a specific cause of human sensation. An understanding of this connection will inform the shaping of architectural environments.

The concealment of integral elements of our environment is the architectural form of deceit. Covering, distraction, and design clutter all serve to drain an architectural space of its essential character. This architectural deceit may pass below our active intellect but is retained in the feeling of a space, coloring our understanding of our surroundings and ultimately shaping our being.

This research has led to an understanding that lives in between that of philosophy and architecture. It is with this fundamental understanding that considerations are presented, not as definitive statements, but as suggestions of how these elements may relate.

Material is never static This fantastic realization of science and philosophy opens the world of the architect to deal exclusively with duration, things that endure. The “final form” in which architectural elements find themselves can only be true in abstract thought as an immeasurable moment when we say “it is done.” By the moment the sand, aggregate, cement, and water has gone through its transformation and come together to the “final form” of a concrete wall, it then begins its transformation back into its constituent parts. Cracks and minute changes in its shape, color and texture mark its position in its endurance. Continuous flow!

Chaos! All definiteness is not lost. There is pattern to the transformation; it admits study and documentation. This resulting material knowledge constitutes a part of the ways in which we are connected to the material.

Studied together this understanding makes its transformation into a spatial knowledge.

Considering the endurance of the material chosen for specific application and the spatial knowledge surrounding it can provide an essential foil to the corporeal considerations in an architectural project. We become distanced from spaces that disregard the flow of things. Acting as a catalyst for the shaping of human interaction the pattern of duration can engender architectural environments with specific quality.

* Notes on Page 64

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^ James Jarzyniecki | Thesis

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^ Andrew Potter | Unscripted Chair

^ Sam Altieri | Photography

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^ Stephen DeMayo | Blurr

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Time for Building Carol Burns, Sam Altieri

How much time has been required for building?

The modular installation illustrated here took two days.

The general contractor needed thirteen months to construct ten duplex dwelling units.

The architectural commission encompassed five years, much of it in securing affordable housing financing.

The client invested more than ten years total.

So much time has passed, yet the buildings have only been brought into realization.

The houses will come to life, in my view, with occupancy just before Christmas, 2012. Then they will become animated, fulfilling their purpose as a setting for the lives of families. This view of architecture as performance is described by Karsten Harries in a musical metaphor: “[A] good house should be somewhat like a musical score; different individuals will give different performances—and the score should be such that it leaves a great deal of room for improvisation.

This score is not to be performed only once, but again and again, as furniture is moved, as rooms are painted and repainted...”1 Whether stage, set, or score, these family dwellings will witness the “juggling” act of everyday quotidian household and family life.

Institutions establish the context of the project as much as the physical surrounds, orientation, or neighbors. They all contribute to what Moneo describes as the pleasure in building: “... to feel... in the process of making, that the entire conception of the world is implicit.

To experience and understand a building is to realize the continuity it proposes between an idea of the world and the construction itself.”3 The world of the project joins the concept to the construction.

Even so, this continuity runs opposite to what Moneo distinguishes as the design idea and the building idea: “Architecture is not simply the expression of a brilliant idea. After the architect has finished [the] work, the idea which motivated it is somehow dead, and at the same time kept alive by the reality of the building ... [T]his reality of the building idea transcends into a new thing that should be sustained by itself.”4 Now that these dwellings have been brought into reality, they will be left to stand amidst all the changes wrought by time and by themselves.

Will they serve their purpose well? Harries sees a good house as providing for deeper needs of humans, who “…demand both stability and change. A successful house will provide for both without obscuring the tension between the two; it will grant the reliability of place and allow for continuing appropriation.”2 Studied and sturdy, the houses are braced for inhabitation, the essential element of what Harries calls “living architecture.”

“Lasting” is another dimension of architectural time. As described

by Rafael Moneo, it relates the architect’s idea for a building and the principles behind its construction to its reality as a built construct.

The many supporters, funders and backers of this affordable/public housing intend that it should last.

* Notes on Page 64

^ Seth Hopewell, Corey Gibbons, Brendan Galinauskas | Community Rowing Boathouse Model

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An Appropriation of Means: The Advent of Installation as a Critical Tool of Architecture Rob Trumbour, Aaron Willette

The idea that there is a privileged relationship between the relatively young medium of installation art and the ancient practice of architecture is far from revolutionary. For decades artists and architects have explored shared interests through the medium of installation; these parallel pursuits can be traced as far back as the 1960’s and 1970’s, when installation first rose to prominence within the arts. A handful of artists who emerged as prime examples of the medium’s possibilities were either formally trained as architects or operated as one professionally1 prior to their artistic careers and used the format to challenge architectural norms. Many installation pieces produced in the arts over the past forty-plus years have provided more insightful commentary on the socio-spatial endeavors of architecture than the work being produced by those operating within architecture itself.

We acknowledge that the installation sits squarely within the realm of the arts, emerging as a response to both the specifics of the arts and larger cultural forces. It is our hope that the architectural profession can better understand how to engage the medium by building upon the experience of the arts, using it as a tool to assess and improve the field we love.

^ Texas Special Topics Studio 2012 | In Relation Installation

The essay "An Appropriation of Means: The Advent of Installation as a Critical Tool of Architecture" is an excerpt from the larger article, which can be found in Big Red & Shiny, a Boston based online journal dedicated to the exploration of contemporary arts and culture. It has been graciously contributed to Wentworth Architecture review from John Pyper, the Editor-in-Chief at BR&S. To read the essay in its entirety, please visit http://www.bigredandshiny.com

The Emergence of Installation Art Installation art fully emerged as an independent medium for experimentation during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Pioneered by the work of groundbreaking artists who combined the participatory energy of performance art with a desire to challenge the perceived sacredness of surface in the arts, installation quickly became a new art form well-suited to accommodate the demands of their rapidly changing cultural context. As artists began to create holistic environments where object and viewer participated in an active dialog the boundaries between performance art, land art and interactive art dissolved, allowing artists to engage their physical, cultural and social context in a new manner. Suddenly it was possible to similarly use the land, stage or the gallery itself (not just the walls) as a canvas to create physical environments, exploring social norms, taboos and new artistic mediums. Artists were liberated from the constraints of surface and abstraction, which had come to dominate the arts; viewers of the work, who until this point had only witnessed art as a third party were challenged with a participatory role2.

The work of Richard Serra relies on a symbiotic relationship between the piece and the viewer, inescapably physical and spatial in nature. To experience the work is to understand it.

In Tilted Arc, his 1981 piece in New York City’s Federal Plaza, Serra described the spatial relationship of viewer to the piece as one that allows the viewer to become "aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer's movement. Step by step the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes."

The visceral nature of Tilted Arc proved to be highly controversial from the moment it was installed, resulting in a lengthy public debate.

This work was a victim not of what it stood for but where it stood. Early in the proceedings the idea of relocating it was presented to Serra, who argued that the work was so site-specific that moving it would undermine its existence.

After the appeal process Tilted Arc was dismantled and removed from Federal Plaza.

It was not the meaning of the work nor what it

symbolized that lead to its demise, but rather its sheer physical presence in the plaza.

Installation is a means to explore and understand the inseparable linkage between art and life. As Mark Rosenthal has proposed, “...for modern artists, the old forms and concepts of art needed refurbishment, their premise being that the world is far more complex and rich than earlier practice had allowed. The aspiration of the modern installation artist became in large part how to reflect the experience of life - its complex issues, aspects, and appearances.

The technique of installation has proved to be a useful tool by which to rhetorically speak about and investigate life.”3

The Architectural Installation Confronted by the possibilities inherent in new technologies, evolving social forces and economic conditions, installation became a vehicle for architects to question the modes of thought and representation galvanized by the International movement. Many of these designers had witnessed or participated in the success of installation in the arts, it is no surprise that they quickly took to the medium as a tool to examine how these emerging conditions might manifest themselves in the built environment. Despite the similarities held between initial conditions, the details of the criteria (underlying theoretical implications, the service nature of the architectural profession, etc.) required that their response be specific to the needs of the profession. The architectural application of the installation as a medium that emerged for architecture had different goals from those found in the arts and took on a distinct character. To both acknowledge these differences and facilitate a conversation around them, we have opted to refer to them as architectural installations.

Like in art, the architectural installation has no shared formal language, as it is required to challenge and explore a wide breadth of architectural topics. Instead of a shared formal language there are two teleological constants that can assist us in identifying and utilizing the architectural installation.

The first constant is that the piece is required to attempt to participate and engage the activity of space-making. At its most primitive level architecture is the act of manipulating space through the built form - for an installation to identify with the this constant it must approach this topic4. By default the medium of installation as a whole is a spatial experience, and all installations can be considered to embody space-making. There is no difference between the condition of spacemaking within the artistic installation and architectural installation. This reinforces the base concept that the medium of installation

remains part of the artistic domain and that all installation work (and their artist) can begin to point towards architectural concepts.

The second constant used to identify the architectural installation is that its point of investigation should have aspirations or implications for the default medium of architecture: buildings. While the architectural installation can still be a means to its own end, it must, at some level, be asking questions whose answers carry weight in the more traditional realms of architecture. This is not to say that the architectural installation is intended to deal only with more concrete aspects of architecture such as tectonics, but rather that the questions it provokes should cause architects at least consider the implications of the architectural installation in their own work.

Praxis, Pedagogy and Discourse With "place-making" and "building-scale aspirations" as our wayfinders, it is possible to map the areas of the architectural profession where the installation has made inroads.

Architecture, like any other intellectual pursuit, is a complicated network of forces that can be challenging to navigate even for those familiar with it. Thankfully it can be conceptually modeled as having three facets: pedagogy, praxis and discourse. Each is constantly changing due to the flux of individuals that engage it: each component can be used to understand and influence the other and there is no established hierarchy between them. To varying extents the architectural installation has utilized by all of them, providing three equally unique perspectives to its inclusion in architecture.

Of these three areas, installation has been utilized in the praxial investigations of architecture the longest, leveraging the capabilities of the architectural installation as a methodology explores ideas in the built form.

The reality is that the construction industry revolves around clients and contractors, banks and building codes: elements rarely concerned with or prepared to accommodate the systematic interrogation of the polemic presented by the conceptual, social and technological potential of architecture. Just as it did with the arts, the medium of installation’s inherent fluidity coupled with the immediacy of its returns permits in-depth explorations into topics of concern without preconditions or preconceptions. The architectural installation provides the profession with a format sympathetic to the desire to explore these polemics through the built environments.

As a result of the constraints placed on architecture by the reality of the building industry, there have been a number of young5 and ambitious practices using architectural installation to engage these polemics, with the

results often re-emerging in their work after they’ve attracted clientele willing to address similar issues6. Some practices may abandon the medium after they’ve moved onto larger commissions, while others choose to employ installations as a research tool alongside more traditional architectural projects.

One architectural practice that used architectural installation at the onset of their career is the office of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). An established, avant-garde practice DS+R has a number of high-profile built projects such as The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2006), the High Line in New York City (2009) and Alice Tully Hall at the Juilliard School (2009). Due to the economic constraints of the late 70’s and a desire to control all aspects of their work, installation and performance became the primary means of exploring architectural concepts rather than construction. The methodologies manifest in their built projects have evolved out of earlier interdisciplinary projects bridging art, performance and architecture through the medium of installation. In the 2003 New York Times article preceding the Whitney Museum of American Art’s retrospective of DS+R’s work, writer Arthur Lublow identified some notable works from this period including: Traffic (Columbus Circle, New York City, 1981), in which the architects arranged 2,500 traffic cones for a period of 24 hours to convey traffic patterns, and Para-Site (1989), which introduced the aspect of audience as performance and plays with the difference between seeing and being seen.

Blur Building (2002), a pavilion constructed for the 2002 Swiss National Expo, combined the diverse interests explored in earlier Diller Scofidio + Renfro projects and encapsulated them in a "traditional" architectural project.

An elevated platform in Lake Neuchatel in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, the pavilion engaged the environment and visitors by networking high-pressure micro sprayers with sensor-embedded raincoats. Resulting in an ephemeral blur of mist that responded to the movements of the visitors and climatic conditions, Blur Building synthesized elements of space, environment and spectacle while still providing for the programmatic requirements of the pavilion.

An interesting development within architectural praxis is the field’s acceptance of architectural installation as a singular mode of participation within the profession. A small number of architectural practices are choosing to focus exclusively on explorations through installation rather than more traditional commissions, arguably rejecting the very medium that defines their field. In the past such practices were considered to be operating at the fringe of the profession, but within the past decade those choosing this model of practice have been celebrated by the profession as a whole

through awards, publication and speaking engagements. While its is clear that these practices don’t participate in the design and production of architecture, the profession has opted to categorize their work within the boundaries of architecture due to the provocative nature of the questions asked of the profession itself by their work.

topic there is no universal agreement on its long-term viability, and some feel that it is yet to prove itself as more than a trend in a profession overly-susceptible to styles and movements. Much to our chagrin the subject of architectural installation is moving quickly and the resulting dialogue can be considered speculative and inconclusive at best.

A long-standing critique of the academic arena where architectural pedagogy unfolds is that the design studio is too dependent upon conceptual projects. That students are often taught to be more adept at exploring the theoretical aspects of architecture completely removed from the real-world design implications of context and construction. In direct response to this commentary, academic design studio across the globe have begun to utilize the immediacy of architectural installation alongside its conceptual ambiguity (often coupled with the design/build7 model of practice) as a means to bridge this divide and participate in both hemispheres of the profession. The development of an installation’s theoretical goals and formal characteristics allow students to explore the full potential of the built form, while participating in its physical construction provides them handson experience with the act of making and the specifics of construction.

Architects and other spatial thinkers have embraced the format of installation partially due to its inclusive nature. The last decade has shown evidence of an energized resurgence in the area of installation from the domain of architecture, with theorists, academics and practitioners turning their focus towards it with increasing regularity. The success of the projects produced during this latest surge of interest have led the field to reevaluate its previously held views on the role of installation, elevating it from a mere fringe exercise to a critical tool.

Discourse has proved to be the most difficult of the three facets for architectural installation to incorporate itself into. As praxis and pedagogy have employed installation as vehicle for auxiliary explorations instead of critical examinations of the medium itself, architectural installation has remained largely off the radar of the institutions (physical or conceptual) that are driving architectural discourse. That is not meant to imply that discourse has been completely blind to the increasing role being played by installation in architecture8. In early 2012 the University of Michigan’s A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning hosted the Whither Symposium, a series of conversations revolving around the position that installation has become "the conceptual framework by which the discipline of architecture imagines itself." There was a pointed intent by those participating in the discussion panels to refer to installation as a topic rather than just as a tool9. It would be overly bold to insinuate that this single event is indicative of architectural installation as whole becoming full ingrained in architecture discourse, rather it shows that installation is slowly being incorporated into the heart of the field.

The appropriation of installation as a critical tool within architecture has lead to the development of a new classification of installation project: the architectural installation. Situated squarely between the realms of arts and architecture, the architectural installation leverages the capabilities of installation to address the specific aesthetic, technological and social challenges of contemporary architecture. The critical lens provided by installation, originally used to challenge the ontology of art, has been turned upon architecture in much the same way, resulting in a much-needed questioning of the discipline’s boundaries and beliefs.

As one would expect, the use of architectural installation as more than a medium for self expression is evident in the examples cited in this text. Returning to the work and trajectory of the strongest example, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, one can see the benefits of the strategic deployment of architectural installation as a means of critical engagement throughout the entirety of the firms work. In discussing the firm’s work Aaron Betsky, director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute and curator of the Whitney retrospective of their work says, ''In experimental architecture and design, they [Diller Scofidio + Renfro] are the only ones who made as the core of their work the question 'What do we mean by architecture?'" It is precisely this line of questioning that expands our collective understanding of the disciplinary boundaries that traditionally exist by thoughtfully invoking architectural installation as a vehicle of reinvention.

Conclusion Only recently has the medium of installation gained enough currency that an honest examination of its unique character and potential has begun to enter the architectural milieu. Due to the relative freshness of the

* Notes on Page 64

^ Aaron Willette, Wes McGee, Cathlyn Newell, Lucy Olechowski, Brandon Clifford | Distort Windows (+ previous spread)

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Distort Windows Aaron Willette

The act of building is multifaceted in its meaning. Its adroitness allows it to simultaneously embody different values for different people, a characteristic that clearly plays a role in the increased popularity of hands-on learning in architectural academia. For some it may be a means to introduce students to the reality of the building industry and trades, while for others it serves as a way to reconnect our profession to a perceived former glory. Within some circles it exists as a vehicle of academic research and in others it becomes a powerful tool of social activism and empowerment. Regardless of its original intent, the process of making is kind enough to accommodate whatever baggage we bring to the job site.

Herein lies the true beauty of building, as it ideally allows multiple, possibly conflicting, agendas to come together democratically and resolve themselves through built form. Distort Windows was no exception to this. First and foremost, the project was a research tool used to provoke larger questions regarding both the formal and performative aspects of glass in architecture. Additionally it acted as a showcase of the capabilities of hardware and software that were developed specifically for the project along with the material effects inherent in these tools. These were tasks that the project team intentionally addressed and achieved at varying levels of success.

But, like any true collaboration, each individual involved with the project had their own trajectory, with Distort Windows occurring at the intersection of these vectors.

I cannot speak for my collaborators on what their intents were, but in hindsight I know what my own were all too well. Initially my involvement with the project was little more than one of support, having a specific skill set that was required for a small portion of the work. As I became increasingly involved with the research I was able to make connections between Distort Windows and my graduate studies, allowing the project to serve as a platform for my own investigations into the emergence of the post-digital in architecture.

It additionally became a means for me to further develop my own technical abilities, provided an introduction to a material to which I had minimal exposure and eventually served as my first foray into academic peer-review publication. And while I am extremely grateful for these and all the other opportunities provided through the simple act of building, the most rewarding aspect of the process was its social value. Distort Windows allowed me to work alongside a truly inspirational body of colleagues, faculty and students alike. More was learned from these interactions than any amount of coursework.

All of this is just a small portion of what building can and should be.

Any form of making constantly presents opportunities that require one to be mindful of what they do if they wish to capitalize upon them. As one engages the medium it is vital that they keep an open mind and resist the temptation to cordon it off into what they may think it is; instead allowing it to develop its own conditional identity.

Such a task is a constant struggle, yet through its engagement we allow ourselves to fully leverage the innate potential in the act of building to further our own trajectories in ways not evident upon its onset.1

* Notes on Page 65

ZEITGEIST! Come with me, my friend, When the day is reaching its end Come with me, through these busy car streets, The lonely retreats Of impulsive feet in expensive malls Of glazed rooms with smiling dolls And restless hearts that build walls: Streets that follow like an enigmatic object Of dogmatic intellect Lead you to inquest Do I dare say, the fatal question, “Why [is it]?�

Come with me, and see Before time pronounces its mortal decree.

There! Over there, a new structure will rise Standing tall in greater disguise: And stretching our fickle necks towards the reflected skies What should we presume?

And emptying our feeble minds of the fatal lies How should we begin?

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^ Joe Saporetti | Cliff Man, Grass Man < Sam Walusimbi

^ Liz Glavin | Wine Opener

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On Why We Fight Liem Than

Eisenman: Of course, if you are a feeling type, you would think that feelings are the essence of the matter; and I cannot help thinking, as a thinking type, that ideas are the essence of the matter... I cannot configure the way you do because then I would not be me, and you would not want me to do that.

Alexander: I'm not so sure about that.1 It is a battle between two distinct camps of architects with one side being of the “feeling” typology (Alexander) and the other being of the “idea” typology (Eisenman). Alexander, who appraises concepts of order and harmony, expresses his concern for architects like Eisenman who preach disharmony, incongruity, and dissonance.

Eisenman rebutted with a comment on the repercussions of abundant “comfort” in today’s society in which he feels the need to fulfill the role of reinventing the idea of “whole” and “unity” as a way to establish a new status quo in architecture. Though Alexander understands this point in reinventing the comfortable in the hopes of a radical change, Eisenman’s motive behind unresolved dissonance leaves him baffled by such inhumaneness which he deems as a chauvinistically modern ideal.

What would happen in a world of “absolute” truths? What would happen if the cosmological questions of the world were uncontested?

What if dogma was THE universal condition?

It may be difficult to disregard the potential of universal truths, let alone stop reaching for them. But wouldn’t the world be better off as a complacent society in which conflict is considered obsolete? No more petty debates and disagreements? Is it the end of our spiritual war? With this said, what would become of an architecture that relied on truths, in which no margin is reserved for potential discourse or contestation? Pragmatism not idealism?

This can be proclaimed as an architecture of truth, or in its definition: the materialization of an obsessive-compulsive condition, the culmination of which seeks to resolve the irresolvable crisis of the truthiness of truth.

Symptoms include but are not limited to: An architecture that is saturated with superfice An architecture where life is fettered in its own ideological manifesto An architecture that rasterizes its own upbringing, leaving syllogistic reasoning at the helm of its narrative Conflict indicates incompatibility. It indicates an inherent disharmony between forces, its implicit cause stemming from subjectivity and opinion. But why does the polemical nature of “conflict” repress the urge to act upon this incongruence, a reluctance to confront? In other words, why is there a need for perpetual harmony and consonance?

A certain force should spar against its ideological adversaries and neglect the conventional nature of conflict as a malevolent figure.

The importance of conflict denotes the exigency of discourse as an imperative for a progressive future. ...without thought, without context.

1

Excerpt from debate between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman entitled “Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture” held at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1982.

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^ Sam Walusimbi | Kleist Park Music Hall

Spatial Performance (A Place to Dance) Mandy Johnson

To create architectural space is to enter into a dialogue; a dialogue with time, space, people, materials, ideas, and all of the contradictions inherent to every system of communication and definition. Architecture is its own unique language capable of fulfilling two seemingly contrasting roles: to provide a functioning physical space that meets certain needs and requirements, and also to create an atmosphere outside of the pragmatic nature of the building itself. This relationship can be considered both the “function” of architecture and the “art” of architecture. The challenge and potential of creating space lies in this concurrent existence within pragmatic and conceptual realities. Both are equally necessary and important in the creation of space, which is why the dialogue of art and function in architecture needs much consideration.

Concepts of dialogue and performance provide a framework of thinking that can inform relations among the dualistic elements of space making. Rather than a direct application of an idea, it forms a basis on which observations can transform into design.

It is a lens through which to view the world and understand contrast, and the relation between the art and function of architecture, in a new light.

Within the purely functional system of architectural communication it can easily happen that spaces become overly prescribed and pragmatic. Through the concept of dialogue, a relation can be created that considers the effects of intangible creative forces upon prescribed pragmatic forces.

Synthesizing these paired considerations is integral to the future conceptions of space. If such a relation between the art and function of architecture can occur, then standardized notions of building can be pushed to do more than mere conventions permit, allowing equally important elements of intuition, interpretation and imagination to enter into otherwise overly prescribed processes of creating space. The practical and creative nature of a space will become enmeshed with dynamic and contrasting layers to create a new whole that is in dialogue with each of its elements.

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Contrast

Atmosphere

Contrast is formally regarded as a distinct separation or divide. Contrast, as defined, can actually be understood as a subtle differentiation of similar elements. Contrast should not be assumed as an absolute division, as such an assumption negates the possibility of relation between different elements. When given further consideration and examined more deeply, we can begin to see not only the obvious differences between elements, but also the threads of similarity that tie them together.

Atmosphere encompasses the air surrounding a particular object or place, which implies a sort of negation to the built environment lying within it. Atmosphere can also be understood, however, as the air emitted from a particular object or place, raising the question of the impact tangible and intangible environments can have upon one another. An experiment in extracting and abstracting an atmosphere is examined here.

A sandwich of drawing and carbon papers were taped down to various surfaces in the Fenway area of Boston. Impressions upon the paper represent cars, bikes, and people that impacted it throughout the day. The hard nature of these surfaces is rendered weightless through their composition; floating like feathers off of the structure on which they were hung.

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Shredded newsprint, monotype ink print, mi-tentes paper, and photographs on chipboard 2.

Carbon and drawing paper on basswood frame

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Pinhole photographs on basswood frame 5.

Impressions of typewritten words on onionskin, basswood frame

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Dialogue, Part I

Dialogue, Part II

Within one frame lay a number of photographs depicting buildings, places, events, and experiences. The method of using a pinhole camera allows for the distortion of such places, creating a visual representation of subjective perception. Awareness is heightened through abstraction, causing the viewer to reconsider her typical perceptions of such elements.

Within the other frame lies architectural syntax; a literal set of definable words that play into the conception and making of architecture. The words were created by removing the ink ribbon from a typewriter, then typing onto each paper to reveal an impression of the letters. The words are rendered â&#x20AC;&#x153;invisible,â&#x20AC;? representing that a literal translation of each word is not apparent in the final outcome of a project; it is rather a layering of ideas that culminate into something not as easy to define. The frames are placed on opposite sides of a room, facing one another, to demonstrate that architecture is not separated by that which is seen and unseen, defined and undefined, but rather is created through a dialogue between the two.

3

4

5

^ Mandy Johnson

Ghosts Kaitlyn Payne (BINT)

The building is a static form of being. Ideas are born, structure is built, materials take shape, facades create cavities, cores, systems, lungs, and a mass begins to breathe. When a human being dies, its body doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t instantly disappear. It takes hundreds of years to fully disintegrate. Similarly, when a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s users stop occupying its space, it becomes vacant, abandoned, and slowly enters into decay.

The building stands without life as a body lies without breath.

But what remains?

Whether it is the bones of the human body or the structural system of a building, what remains of a structure are the materials, the structure; imprints of what used to be. These artifacts are moments of history and tales of a time that no longer endures. Unlike humans, buildings are neither put to rest nor buried. Unless demolished, they are left vacant, empty, and cold. Old factories, facilities, manufacturing plants, and barns are left for dead in every corner of the world.

These desolate structures become ghosts, as they are something that no longer lives but whose spirit remains. When one enters a ghosted building, feelings of the people that occupied the space, the actions they took, and the use of the structure is felt. Walking through an abandoned building slowly reverses time and reveals the beauty of a forgotten place. These ghosts speak, hold history, and reveal a different type of existence.

What will the architecture of the future be? More and more buildings will occupy the land and there will come a time when our obsession with new construction will diminish. Subsequently, resurrection of the past will become the new epoch. Listening not only to typology, geography, light, and weather, but also to the pre-existing structure, will become the new design process. A brief will no longer concern only the architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ideas and theories, but also a response to what has already been determined and expressed.

Does this change anything?

Site still demands the same exploration, visualization, communication, and evaluation but how this process is explored has changed. Design is now not only an interaction with the existing nature, but a communication with a human built form; one that was born, lived, and died. The land is no longer empty of human presence but full of it. But how will these forgotten ghosts be dealt with? Are these structures to be demolished, or forms with which one may both interact and work? There are no clear answers to these questions. Perhaps spending time with the ghosts, appreciating their indestructible beauty, and respecting their time spent on this earth, both alive and dead, will lead to a more complete understanding of site and building.

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Re:reading Heidegger Marc J. Neveu, PhD Associate Professor

Why read Heidegger?

This seems a fair question to ask in a school of architecture. We study architecture, not philosophy, right? Heidegger’s topics, often ontologically bound, do not translate directly into architectural praxis; the writing, especially in English, is dense; the words, opaque and often loaded with specific yet obtuse meaning, are not exactly floating through contemporary architectural discourse. In an architectural journal with the theme “build,” please allow me the possibility that Heidegger’s lecture, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” might offer something to the conversation. In the following essay, I propose to discuss the three main themes of the Heidegger’s lecture title – building dwelling thinking – and attempt to unravel a few of the lessons learned from the text that may help to understand what it means to build and, perhaps, for building.

^ Francesco Stumpo | Boston Aerial Photography

Heidegger delivered his now well-known lecture, “Building Dwelling Thinking” on 05 August 1951 at the Darmstädter Gespräch (Darmstädter Talks) – the “Ted Talks” of post-War Germany. Although no YouTube evidence exists, we do have the transcript of his lecture as well as a wealth of secondary scholarship around the text. By all accounts it was very well received. Contemporary critics noted that the audience even remained silent through the entire reading!

The work was written in the later half of Heidegger’s career. His masterwork, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927) had been written almost twenty-five years earlier and his much-discussed allegiance to the National Socialist party through the 1930s in Germany all but removed him from consideration for an academic position in post-war Germany. Although ambivalent he resigned from his politically appointed post as rector in Freiburg after only one year – Heidegger’s involvement in politics undoubtedly overshadowed his teaching career and has surely affected the reception of his work. Perhaps more important to Heidegger’s thinking than academic posts and political interests, the 1930s was also the time in which the manner by which Heidegger thought shifted. It is at this time, known as “the turn,” that Heidegger’s thinking shifts to exegesis and etymology.

The topics of his writing continued to be focused on the nature of being, but he did so by carefully unpacking history – philosophers and poets alike – and more specifically, language. This mode of thinking is especially evident in his lecture at Darmstädter

“building” to “being” by way of “dwelling.” In other words, building is dwelling, but we do not build to dwell. We build, rather, because we dwell.

Wohnen / Dwelling

This idea of our situated-ness had already been developed in Heidegger's earlier, and I might argue more phenomenological, writings. As early as Being and Time, we find the development of befindlichkeit, often translated as “attunement,” that grounds the idea of the perhaps more mystical sounding “four-fold.” Think of it this way. We wake up in the morning and the world is given.

The sky is above; the ground is below. The sun rises and sets. Even after the clear conception of the world from Descartes and Newton to Einstein and Hawking, we do not need to first conceptualize the way in which we walk down a set of stairs, or the way we drink coffee from a cup prior to walking or drinking. Our hand moves from cup to mouth; we drink and place the cup back down on a table without, it seems, even thinking. We are, as beings, situated; we are oriented in our world, before conceptual thought. Indeed, even as the mapping of our DNA may be “truthful,” such knowledge does not reconcile our lived experience or ever lead to self-knowledge. The ramification of such thinking to architecture, then, may not be to produce yet another empty formalism, or to nostalgically attempt to remake a shared order, but may in fact be

Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build (Heidegger, 361).

Heidegger begins the lecture by asking two questions: What is it to dwell? How does building belong to dwelling? To answer the question he looks to language, to the words themselves, and finds that building and dwelling are etymologically related.

Heidegger claims that the depth of meaning in the word bauen (building) has been lost and he argues that by understanding the fullness of the word, we may recover some sense of wohnen (dwelling). Ready? In early German, the word for dwelling, baun, meant to remain, to stay in one place. The word is related to the contemporary word for neighbor, nachbar. Heidegger explains the connection by noting that “the nachbar is the nachgebur, the nachgebauer, the near-dweller, he who dwells nearby.” Then, by way of a series of verbs, buri, büren, beuren, beuron, bauen is related to the verb to be, ich bin (I am) and du bist (you are).

He continues. Bauen (building) also implies other meanings: to cherish, to preserve, and to cultivate. In this way, Heidegger connects

For Heidegger, dwelling is different than living. We are inherently situated in what he terms the fourfold: earth (saving), sky (receiving), divinities (awaiting), and mortals (initiating). Each is connected and it is not possible to conceive of one separate from the others. For Heidegger, our world is not first conceptualized but is, rather, given.

This is what he names as the earth. The sky shows the temporal nature of the earth. The seasons change; the sun vaults over the horizon; the stars dance across the night sky. The timelessness of this refers to the divinities. It is mortals, and not divinities, that die. We are the mortals. Dwelling is the active, rather than passive, recognition of the fourfold. Such recognition initiates a saving – not preserving, but “bringing into presence” – the earth, receiving the sky, and awaiting the divinities. While these terms may seem to our modern ear a bit mystical, perhaps even hokey, it is exactly this order that architecture once was able to reconcile. The remaking of our world through architecture is seen across time and place. Think of early ritual centers such as Nabta Playa, ideal cities such as Wangchen, stupa complexes like Sanchi, the temples at Karnak, the Haram al-Sharif, even the gothic cathedrals scattered around Paris. Each “building” situated the culture that built the work.

Each building is also grounded within a defined worldview.

to allow us to become aware of our own place within the world. Within the recent fascination in architectural discourse with all things digitalia, such a perspective seems as radical as it does naïve. Heidegger’s text opens up to the possibility that we consider the way in which a building frames our experience and allows us to understand the fullness inherent in being and in place. The question remains, however, in our world, one that lacks a common worldview, can architecture still recognize the fourfold?

Perhaps a few examples will help.

One looks at the sky differently after experiencing a sky space by James Turrell.

The relation between the sky and the ocean is made elusively clear in the courtyard of the Salk Institute. The Unitè in Marseille draws a thick line between the ocean and the mountains most clearly seen from the roof garden. Sitting (but not standing) in the main room of Taliesin West frames the moment when mountains meet land. Standing in the Rodin Crater the land catches one’s shadow in the face of celestial phenomena, some of which will not be made visible for another few centuries. There are many, many more examples. In each of the examples above, “place” is privileged over “space.” And each demonstrate what Heidegger referred to as a versammlung “gathering” of the fourfold.

Another idea that relates each is that the view “from” the building is just as important, and perhaps even more so, than the view “of” the building. One might argue, however, that all building situates and further, all architecture contains both a view “of” and a view “from.” The window in your apartment, that shiny new entry to Beatty Hall, and even the seating in Blount hall orients you in a particular way and can be looked “at” as well as looked “from.” Indeed, all architecture is experienced and all architecture situates.

What then makes one building better than another? Heidegger might argue that better architecture is maieutic. It reveals what was already there but not yet known. This is dwelling.

Bauen / Building The essence of building is letting dwell (Heidegger, 361).

Here, Heidegger is clear. Inhabitation, lodging, space planning, simplicity of maintenance, relative expense, openness to air, light, and sun, is not building. What then is building? There are technical skills that must be learned for one to be called architect. Indeed it is just this ability to know how an arch or beam works and how to represent and communicate this that makes one an architect and not a doctor, for example. The thoughtful architect understands and works through this

knowledge. Architecture, however, is not simply a technical endeavor, but rather one that, as Heidegger points out, requires technē. As one of the four forms of knowledge known to the Greeks, technē was not something specific only to builders but was understood to be a way of making, for builders, poets, doctors, and politicians alike.

It was a quality of making that required an understanding inherent within and expressed through the specifics of each craft. Those doctors, poets, politicians, and builders who understood their craft through technē could make well.

Hans-Georg Gadamer discusses technē along similar terms. He describes the Greek understanding of technē in the “Apologia for the Art of Healing,” which differentiated, for the first time, the doctor who understood how to apply a universal knowledge to achieve a specific result, from the medicine man who held mysterious powers. (Howard Roark, that fountain of many headaches, is certainly more medicine man than doctor). Although Gadamer was discussing physicians and health, the analogy could easily be applied to architects and the well-being of a building. He explains: “[the] Greek concept of techne does not signify the practical application of theoretical knowing, but rather a special form of practical knowing. Technē is that knowledge which constitutes a specific and tried ability in the context of producing things. It is related from the very beginning to the sphere of production, and it is from this sphere that it first arose. But it represents a unique ability to produce; one, which knows what it, is doing, and knows on the basis of grounds” (Gadamer, 1996).

Gadamer’s “practical knowing” is found through making and not through some sort of divine right. He continues to state that, “The true art of healing, which involves authentic knowing and doing, thus requires the capacity to distinguish between the particular constitution of the organism in question and what is actually compatible with that constitution” (Gadamer, 1996).

This echoes Heidegger’s notion of dwelling, understood to be meaningful through the situated-ness of circumstance. Can we then ask: what is the particular technē of architects? Architects do not make buildings; we make representations of buildings. This may take many forms – from the objective construction documents produced in professional practice to the inter-subjective musings of what is often referred to as “paper architecture.” The work of Piranesi, Lequeu, Boullèe, Gandy, Malevich, Lerup, Libeskind, Darden, and Brodsky + Utkin, to name a few, comes to mind. It is clear, however, that neither the contract document nor imaginary proposal is fully capable of rendering the wholeness of our architectural

experience but that both contribute to the same. Both also require technē more than technique, or theory, alone.

Denken / Thinking But that thinking itself belongs to dwelling in the same sense as building, although in a different way, may be attested to by the course of thought here attempted (Heidegger, 362).

Although thinking is the final word in the essay’s triumvirate, Heidegger does not discuss the word at any length. This may seem a curious omission, however a closer reading reveals that the act of thinking is embedded in the structure of the lecture.

Repeatedly, Heidegger asks questions to the audience. At my count, he asks at least twenty questions in the body of the text. The questions are discussed, but not answered directly. In this way, Heidegger raises the issue of a criterion of judgment. How does one decide? How does one test? How does one choose? How does one judge? In essence, how does one think? How do you know, when proposing a project in studio, for example, which is the best option? In other words, what model of knowledge should guide the making of architecture?

Is architecture to be understood as a service practice in which business, profit, and client interests guide making? While the development of a professional architect is certainly one goal of a professionally accredited school of architecture, it is also clear from the recent housing collapse, for example, that profit-based decision making may lead to disastrous results for many and wealth to only a select few. Furthermore, the actual percentage of built work completed under the guidance of an architect, or any of our allied fields, is so minor compared to the enormity of our built environment that one might, rather, begin to question our professional model. A second model claims architecture as a cultural practice in which the example of the humanities determines the discourse. This, too, is one of the aims of an accredited school of architecture and the relationship between architecture and culture is longstanding. All cultures, for example, build, and all cultures tell stories.

It is clear that architecture has always been about more than shelter alone. Taken too far or seen in isolation, however, this model may lead to either the referential labyrinth or the autonomous sphere as described so precisely by Manfredo Tafuri. Neither is completely fulfilling, and, it is hard to live in a house made of paper. A third model sees architecture as an applied science in which decisions are made based upon measurable, reproducible, idealized, and generic outcomes. This pseudo-scientism in architecture by way of “performance” is getting the most press lately and, in the

face of a global environmental crisis, it is hard to argue that architecture need do much else. Our shared fascination with all things technological may, however, not be the answer to a timeless architecture. Dare I propose that “timeless” is perhaps the most environmentally appropriate approach? If anything, history has shown that all modes of scientific progress eventually become normalized and are folded into building codes. Advances such as electricity, plumbing, and fire safety, once understood as novel technologies, for example, have become the norm. This, too, will most likely be the fate of our technological responses to the global crisis. (Can you guess who might LEED the way?) In the end, perhaps it is better to ask both what the building does and what the building means. While none of the above models wholly address the way in which one thinks about architecture, they are each, in some part, essential.

It is, hopefully, clear that Heidegger’s essay cannot be read as an instrumental guide to building. Rather, the import of the essay is in the awareness that the act of building is inherently related to the act of thinking.

Both thinking and building require that we recognize our capacity to dwell. Thinking is not a cognitive act, but is rather a letting go. It is an opening up to phenomena rather than a reduction to abstraction or conceptualization.

This may be the most important lesson in the text. Heidegger, often seen as somehow abstruse or abstract, was in fact most interested in the concrete realities of our existence. The lessons are, however, open and ask that you propose your own response.

So, what do you think?

* Postscript and notes on Page 65

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Two Connections:

Time For Building:

An Appropriation of Means:

Notes

Notes

Notes

1 Middlebury. “Heraclitus: The Complete Philosophical Fragments.” Harris, William. http:// community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Philosophy/ Heraclitus.html (accessed October 11, 2011)

1 Karsten Harries, “The Dream of the Complete Building,” Perspecta 17, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1980, p. 43

1 Gordon Matta-Clark studied architecture at Columbia University and Walter Pichler practice as an architect in Austria before focusing on his more artistic pursuits.

2 Ibid., 20.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., 23.

3 Rafael Moneo, “The Idea of Lasting,” Perspecta 24, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1980, p. 156

4 Ibid., 21.

4 Ibid., p. 155

5 Ibid., 58.

Research on prefab housing can be found at: http:// taylorburns.com/a_double_wide_analysis/index.html

6 Bergson, Henri, and Frank Lubecki Pogson. Time and Free Will, An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. New York: Harper, 1960.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., 65.

9 Ibid., 71.

10 Ibid., 83.

11 Ibid., 133.

12 Ibid., 157.

13 Ibid., 185.

14 Ibid., 228.

15 Ibid., 253.

16 Bollnow, Otto Friedrich. Human Space. London: Hyphen Press, 2011.

2 Understanding Installation Art From Duchamp to Holzer by Mark Rosenthal, p 25 3 Understanding Installation Art From Duchamp to Holzer by Mark Rosenthal, p 26-27 4 It is not the charge of this paper to establish what qualifies a successful attempt, but rather expect that a conscious attempt is made.

5 "Young", in this context is not a matter of the age of the participants, but rather of the practice itself.

6 Diller Scofidio + Renfo, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects and SHoP Architects are some that immediately come to mind.

7 Design/build has a number of different meanings within architecture, in this instance, from a pedagogical the term refers to its most simplistic of meanings: one in which the students design a project and construct it themselves to better understand the physical implications of their design decisions.

8 The simple fact that this paper is being written attest to the increased attention being paid to installations from the various facets of architecture.

9 Videos of the discussions can be found at http://vimeo.com/taubmancollege.

17 Ibid. 31.,

In Relation Installation:

18 Ibid., 50.

Professor - Rob Trumbour

19 Ibid., 74.

Samantha Altieri Viviana Bernal Erblin Bucaliu Kate Bujalski Alex Cabral (wood shop technician) Brittany Carey Kristen Giannone Ryan Kahen Mark Morin Bao Nguyen Samantha Partington Charlie Simmons Liem Than

20 Ibid., 85.

21 Ibid., 99.

22 Ibid., 115.

23 Ibid., 198.

24 Ibid., 225.

25 Ibid., 269.

26 Ibid., 283.

27 Olafur Eliasson, Italo Calvino, Ina Blom, Daniel Birnbaum, and Mark Wigley. Your Engagement Has Consequences on the Relativity of Your Reality.

Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2006.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

Distort Windows:

Re:reading Heidegger:

Re:reading Heidegger:

Notes

Postscript Marc J. Neveu, PhD

Notes

1 For more information on the postdigital, I highly recommend the writings of artist Mel Alexenberg (http://www.melalexenberg.com).

Distort Windows, its companion piece Diffuse Globes and the Glass Cast research project as a whole were a huge undertaking that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of numerous individuals: Project Team: Wes McGee of Matter Studio Design and Cathlyn Newell of Alibi Studio with Aaron Willette, Lucy Olechowski, Brandon Clifford Fabrication Team: Grant Weaver, Simon Rolka, Patrick Ethen, Maciej Kaczynski, Etienne Turpin, Andrew Stern, Brian Muscat, Chuck Newell Consultant: Steve Karnowski The work was graciously funded by: Research Through Making Grant | Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Office of the Vice President of Research | University of Michigan For more information on Distort Windows, please visit www.pixelwhore.com

While I do not speak German, I do notice a curiosity in the translation of Heidegger’s text from the original German to English. In the translation, all three words in the title are gerunds. The title is not “to build, to dwell, to think” but rather “build-ing dwell-ing think-ing.” To each word, the suffix “– ing” is added and each becomes active. Germans, however, do not use a suffix to imply a non-finite verb. This function is served by a nominalized infinitive (das Rauchen, das Sprechen). The verb turns into a noun. In everyday speech, one does not use the nominalized infinitive. It is simply understood that the action is continuing. To say, for example, “I am thinking of you” (Ich denke an dich), the word denke is the present form of denken.

As mentioned, in Heidegger’s essay, the German infinitives “Wohen Bauen Denken” are translated into English as the gerunds, “Building Dwelling Thinking.” What might this mean?

In the prelude to his wonderful study on music theory, Musicking, Christopher Small discusses the shift in the representation of musical performance.

He notes that the score of a performance was, for many years, written not before, but after the piece was performed. Now, however, classical music is often performed in strict adherence to a particular score and the value of the piece is in reference to that score. The title of Small’s book, Musicking, creates a gerund from the noun “music” to describe the way in which music was understood prior to the transformation from performance to representation.

Music was an event, not a document. If one considers the translation of the title in Heidegger’s essay, perhaps there is the possibility to think of building, dwelling, and thinking as events, as performances. With all the press that the nature of performative design is getting in architectural discourse these days, can we ask what is the nature of architecture-ing?

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1 For a more “architectural” reading, see Karsten Harries, “In Search of Home,” Bauen und Wohen / Building and Dwelling, Martin Heidegger’s Foundation of a Phenomenology of Architecture, Ed. Eduard Führ (Münster: Waxmann, 2000): 101-120.

2 Victor Farias ignited a long dormant controversy with his Victor Farias, Heidegger et le nazisme (Paris: Éditions Verdier, 1987). The book offers a wealth of primary sources, however, the interpretation of those sources has been hotly contested. Students of Heidegger, notably Hannah Arendt, supported the philosopher who, oddly, did not ever issue an official response to his involvement in National Socialism.

3 David Leatherbarrow develops this theme, architecturally, in a series of essays. See, for example, Leatherbarrow, David. “Landings and Crossings.” and “Practically Primitive.” Architecture Oriented Otherwise. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009).

4 The word technē and its specific relation to technology is discussed further by Heidegger in his essay, “Question Concerning Technology” Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Tr. William Lovitt. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977).

5 See, Tafuri, Manfredo. The Sphere and the Labyrinth. Tr. Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert Connolly, (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1980).

6 For more on the idea of thinking as letting go, see, Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, Tr. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, (New York, Harper & Row: 1966).

References Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Apologia for the Art of Healing.” The Enigma of Health: The Art of Healing in a Scientific Age. Tr. Jason Geiger & Nick Walker.

(Stanford: Stanford UPress, 1996).

Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, and Thought, Tr. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971): 145-61. The German text originally appeared in Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Ausstäze (Pfullingen: Günther Neske Verlag, 154): 145-62.

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Tr. John Stambaugh, (New York: SUNY Press, 2010).

Martin Heidegger, “Question Concerning Technology” Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.

Tr. William Lovitt. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).

Chris Small, Musicking: the Meanings of Performing and Listening, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UPress: 1998).

COMMUNITY DESIGN

An Insensitive Approach A Critique of the Campus Master Plan of Wentworth Institute of Technology Nate Gove In 2010, Wentworth Institute of Technology revealed an extensive masterplanning scheme that represents the projected future for the infrastructure of the institutional campus as it grows and develops over the next decade. In 2012, fourth year architecture students responded to this plan by integrating it with multiple proposals of a master scheme for the surrounding Mission Hill community. This is what they learned:

As institutions of higher learning, Wentworth, and many others, are in large part responsible for the economic depression and loss of identity within the surrounding community of Mission Hill. Therefore, is it not right to expect that we are called to provide integrative solutions to this problem? Does Wentworth really possess the desire to respond to community needs as well as it’s own? Do we truly seek to establish positive learning partnerships and foster growth using our resources to enhance a community that lacks the means by which to produce these opportunities for itself? This community studio, though focused on our own innovations and design, also presented issues within the area of overlap between the neighboring community of Mission Hill and Wentworth Institute of Technology, revealing where the institution is failing to facilitate a beneficial relationship with it’s surrounding context. What we learned serves as a direct critique about the role of Wentworth as a higher authority being called to respond along the border of a conflicting separation between institutional expansion and communal decay.

In regards to the Master Plan as a whole, students were focused on the Sweeney Field proposal to be placed along Parker Avenue.

The site, a current parking lot, represents a rather dead space that exists between the Wentworth campus and surrounding Mission Hill housing projects. In the Community Design studio, fourth year architecture students had to incorporate Wentworth’s plan to relocate the field into their design for the overall master planning of Mission Hill. In doing so, many felt as if the design intent for this area was an insensitive and problematic approach within Wentworth’s efforts to expand.

It was no coincidence that as a result of this, many proposals indicated that the field itself was not a viable option for an area in need of economic development and enhanced community relations.

Many plans revealed the field as a piece of a more communityoriented system of spaces. In short, students came to the realization that if they could change the proposition of the new field, they would.

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It is not to say that an athletic facility would be an unsuccessful

the campus. They intended to create a rejuvenated middle ground

venture for Wentworth within this area, however, if Wentworth plans

for both the residential community and institutional campus. Other

to push into the surrounding context of its bordering communities,

ideas for utilizing the valuable brewery buildings on the site sought

it needs to think about a more sensitive design approach. While

to use the existing infrastructure to provide space for community

maintaining much needed parking within the area is a successful

learning and activity in addition to the field being constructed. Many

aspect of the project, placing a field on the site does very little to

ideas were expressed, and in reality, the majority of them were more

change the current social condition. As a private institution expands

rich and viable than the project that is currently being proposed.

into neighboring communities, residents become more and more aware of the invasion, recognizing that the ever-expanding institution

A field is great, but what else could it be? A great option for

is forcing them out. If designs choose not to provide anything for

Wentworth, but what does it offer to the community? As students

them, then it only increases their level of frustration and discomfort.

of design, we are challenged to think of ways to design for social

It is our opinion that though Wentworth possesses strong ties with

change, or ways in which we can enhance the community of life

the Mission Hill community, this project represents a potential threat

in and around our projects. In designing for the area, we became

to the relationship between the two parties.

informed and inspired by the people, places, and opportunities within Mission Hill. A community that is crying out for a new sense

The field itself poses many issues for the residents of the area,

of identity and reclamation of the quality of life that once existed for

the first of which being the lighting. Though Wentworth has made

all people, Mission Hill represents a problem we are passionate in

it clear in their analysis that lighting has been studied in order

acknowledging and persistent in pursuing. We challenge Wentworth,

to minimize impact, this doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t change the fact that there will

as the entity that is educating us with these methods of thinking, to

be a heavy amount of light directly adjacent to two large housing

respond in similar fashion.

communities. This light, though it can be argued increases the safety in exposing the area, also disturbs and disrupts the current

As students we recognize our role in this problem as well as our role

members living there. Beyond its physical disruption, it symbolizes

in the potential solution to it. We are questioning the sensitivity and

a sign of neglect of the local inhabitance and compromises their

commitment of Wentworth and wondering how deep the desire for

quality of living.

intentional community relations lies, particularly when faced with challenges amidst providing for the demanding needs of a prospering

Furthermore, the placement of a twenty million dollar facility is

institution. It is our stance that Wentworth has neglected to back up

great for the students of the institution, but what does it offer to the

their intentions in the design behind its Master Plan. Recognizing

community? Why canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a twenty million dollar project include the

that not all components are destructive, we as students of design

means to reach out to the members to which it lies adjacent? If it is

and members of the community do feel it is our responsibility to

constructed to facilitate collegiate athletics and offers no program

take the initiative and point out where Wentworth has successfully

opportunities to the local residents then it is no more valuable to

instructed us and where it is currently failing.

people outside the institution than the existing parking lot. If a field is constructed on this site, and functions the same way the current Sweeney Field does, it will exist as an incredibly exclusive space. In fact, if it develops as nothing more than what has been proposed, then in reality it offers no more than a glorified sidewalk condition for the community.

There are a lot of potential resolutions to the design that were highlighted within the proposals presented to Wentworth Faculty and members of the Mission Hill community last spring. Options of inserting more program into the street and site responded to the desire for Parker Avenue to become the connecting throughway for students to and from Mission Hill, and residents walking through

Inclusivity Herman Zinter Studio (Spring 2012)

Inclusivity: an intention or policy that includes people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized; the handicapped, learning-disabled, or racial and sexual minorities.

Such is the goal of this proposal, to practice inclusion as opposed to exclusion. With the forthcoming Parcel 25 Development and the implementation of the new Sweeney Field Plan, the imagined master plan works to create a harmonious connection with all facets of the surrounding Mission Hill & Roxbury context and not only their socially accepted ones.

Through interweaving ‘four strands’ - green spaces, vehicular and pedestrian traffic, as well as the commercial – all factors inherent to the surrounding urban context, the project aims to reach out and invite the existing community into this burgeoning urban sub-center.

^ Kevin Conant | Station Street Section

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A Space Within a Place Sam Partington

Located on the corner of Tremont and Parker Street, Plot 12 serves as the gateway to our proposed development of the Mission Hill community. The scheme introduces a new pedestrian plaza that runs parallel to Parker Street between a series of proposed mixed-use residential projects. Allowing residents to enter the buildings from the plaza rather than the main street begins to address issues of scale and identity within the design of the community. The transition from the city to the community to the unit became the focal point of the studio; addressed from the beginning stages of master planning to the individual details of unit design.

Despite a dramatic range in scale from high-rises to row houses, all residential housing complexes introduce a layering quality of the community that is unique to urban living. This notion of community begins with a relationship to the city and is defined further as residents gather in their neighborhoods, housing complexes, and finally units. Although publicity is an inherent characteristic of urban living, residence still require a sense of privacy and retreat in a place of living. How can we achieve this sense of privacy and individualism within the public realm of the city without compromising desirable qualities of openness and freedom?

The unit refers to the individual member of a comprised whole.

A successful urban dwelling unit must consider both scales simultaneously throughout design. My design incorporates a double height loft units to offer both ample light and a separation of public and private space within the confines of the individual dwelling area. Bringing the private program to a second level within the unit allows both floors to remain completely open and visually connected to the outdoors.

Incorporating outdoor living space into each unit enables residents to remain connected to the community from the comfortable distance of their own home.

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^ Liem Than | Tremont Street Sections

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Connectivity Erik Miller Studio (Spring 2012)

In an effort to revitalize the Mission Hill neighborhood, our master plan seeks to attract both permanent and transient residents by establishing opportunities for retail, residential, restaurants, and cultural exhibitions.

Circulation flows from the greater Boston area through the Southwest Corridor and navigates across a series of intimate â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pocket parksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; before converging on Tremont Street.

The parcels are aided by the development of Sweeney Field, Parcel 25, and Roxbury Crossing Station. By focusing the redevelopment around the avenues of greatest access to Tremont Street, Mission Hill will become a center for community integration amongst residents, students, and visitors. The urban master plan features a variety of programs that include; Housing, Commercial, Academic, and Community Uses.

<^ James White + Craig Zygmund | Roxbury Crossing Entrance

Housing types include family housing in row-style townhouses along Parker Street or micro-lofts that allow for live/work/ gallery space. Commercial space includes cafe and bakeries among various other small shops. Academic spaces function as student housing and space that supports the Wentworth Institute of Technology and Sweeney Field. Community space serves the local residents in providing learning programs in cultural arts and supporting the Tobin Community Center.

The diverse program compliments itself by creating a dynamic, connected experience for the community of Mission Hill.

> Justin Dias (proceeding spread)

Blurring the Edge Margarita Iglesia Studio (Spring 2012)

The exposed Orange Line Railway is an odd chasm that isolates Roxbury from Mission Hill. Following the objective to blur the dividing edge of the railway, a choice was made to build over the Orange Line. With this new built ground, residential buildings are proposed that would house various demographics of inhabitants. The occupancy for the residential buildings is allocated accordingly, resulting in an amalgamation of diverse communities. Closer to the Wentworth campus, focus is placed on graduate housing, while the more commercial oriented Tremont Street receives housing designed for young professionals and artists. Within this embodiment, there is also a need for activity at the street level. This is achieved by having commercial spaces on the street level floor and outdoor places for socializing. In addition, a "Main Street" is implemented to encourage permeability through this dynamic site that sits within two separated communities.

^ Nick Gianetti | View from Tremont Street

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Gracing History Lucy Brown

Architecture built for a community must address much more than practical considerations. It must inspire and provoke.

The architecture must foster continuity between the social life on the streets and the activities within its built form.

The choice of a gymnasium as program is specific to the site of plot 9, which includes the historical brick brewery buildings as well as the proposed athletic field. Plot 9 is also a focal point of the community master plan abutting Parker Street, a situation that allows the gymnasium to exist centrally. Placing a gymnasium alongside the athletic field creates a seamless transition of physical activities from the exterior into the interior.

The gymnasium building design encourages participation and interaction through specific sectional qualities and materiality.

The double height gym located on the second level extends ten feet on all sides of the base perimeter, leaving an exterior pedestrian path underneath the overhang. Pedestrians in passing are able to view into the pool area creating a visual connection from the exterior.

Transparent glass is the only material used to gently grace the existing brick brewery buildings, which are so embedded into the cultural history of Roxbury. This transparency also allows for a continuous relationship between the interior and exterior.

Small interior footbridges are the only passages connecting the new building to the old brewery buildings. The footbridges occur at the existing openings of the brewery building, emphasizing the intention to leave a portion of Roxburyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history untouched. The brick and corten steel materials allow the brewery buildings to stand on their own amidst the glass surrounding them, without losing the overall relationship between the new and old.

^ Liem Than | Photography

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^ Sam Altieri + Craig Zygmund | Station Street Elevation

Building Communities A Conversation With Manuel Delgado and Herman Zinter

As a follow up to the Community Design Studio, Wentworth Architecture review sat down with two Wentworth professors whom can be credited with directing the studio, Manuel Delgado and Herman Zinter. Manuel Delgado built extensively in Caracas, Venezuela before attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Urban and Regional Studies. He was also Project Manager for the Fenway Community Development Corporation and has collaborated with many local communities around the Boston Region as part of the Community Design Studio. Herman Zinter received his B.Arch from the University of Minnesota and his M.Arch from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been teaching the Community Design Studio for many years and is a registered Architect.

Livable Community WAr: Is design excellence the main factor in creating a livable community?

Herman Zinter: Design excellence is a term that could be describing urban design or individual unit or building design. I came across an article that followed (Paul) Rudolph and was addressed to Yale when he took the leadership of their architecture school calling for visual design and a restored delight in visual design. Historically over time there has been a group of three words: firmness, commodity and delight. Darius called it security, adequate and beautiful. From this commodity and delight we might say it is structurally sound, its functional, and there is a delight or an aesthetic. Over time those three things kind of summarize architecture, say, from just building and I would say it is the component of delight that does that.

Manuel Delgado: I also think that this excellence in design has to do with this idea of the community, has to do with the identity of the community, with a certain type of space or local idea of a place. In my background I can tell you a little bit more because in the Mediterranean countries or in the Caribbean countries as well, in Latin America, the sense of space or the identity of space comes out, its like a natural phenomena that happens in the cities themselves. People live a lot of their lives outdoors and very much have a social life, so the idea of living in a community but still having an identity of the space is very important. The question is how you design the identity? How can you participate actively in the decision-making?

These are important changes that have happened recently. We are very much used to the idea that design comes from the top to the bottom, that mayors, other authorities or local governments decide what to do with the rest of the city in terms of investments and other decision-making. What is, I think, new for me in the process and also in trying to implement it here is the fact that we, in participating with the community from the bottom up can bring also that sense of identity that is given by the design - by the excellence of design that you mention here.

Zinter: In addressing the other part of the question about creating a livable community, or what is a livable community, the direct thought that I had was one exercise that we did in last semester’s community design studio. At the start of the design project for housing I just asked the students if they would list ten attributes or criteria that they would try to find in an apartment, and it was far-ranging. So it is hard to tell whether some of those attributes are what makes it a livable community. I found an article in the paper this morning stating that Boston ranks very high in best places to grow old. It says,

“you can walk just about anywhere, including the gym, doctor’s office, and a historical house where I volunteer.” One way to define a livable community is that you can find all these things within walking distance. The livable community I think is a struggle right now and I think for years now people have been trying to figure out “the automobile” - there are so many cars! There have been strategies to push them more to the background and to compact the community more - to be less dependent on them in favor of better public transportation. On the other hand there are suburbs where you can have a big nice lawn, but you have to drive. You can’t walk.

...the sense of space or the identity of space comes out, its like a natural force that happens in the cities themselves. People live a lot of their lives outdoors and very much have a social life, so the idea of living in a community but still having an identity of the space is very important.

Delgado: This is one thing we have tried to focus on in the community design studio in the last few years is trying to define this idea of livable communities by creating and understanding the conditions in which every community develops and what is the real identity of each of the communities that we are working with. We have been working, for example, with communities in East Boston, which are mainly of Latino origin, to communities in Roxbury, Allston, and Brighton communities where they have more professionals, and communities in Fenway where there is a contrast between students and elderly people. There is a fact that each community has an identity made by the people but also by the spaces and the characteristics of each of the communities.

When we were working in East Boston we had to realize that we were working on an island. The case of East Boston is interesting because they don’t have the possibility to walk outside their own neighborhood without taking the subway or without taking the car, or a train, or a plane. It is a community that is isolated, but that also makes it part of the character because it is surrounded by water; it is open to the water and to the views of the city. The same happens with other more central communities, for example the Fenway community, located along the beautiful park

by (Frederick Law) Olmsted, which gives the identity centrality. It is like the courtyard of the community on a larger scale; a courtyard for the whole city, but the community holds it as their own and they take care of it. The characteristics of each community held the students in studio to understand what we are looking for in the analysis in order to propose ideas to complement that process of planning and developing that those communities have.

Zinter: To me there is even a step down from community we have been discussing.

Boston identifies itself as a city, but then you have the communities of Back Bay, Fenway, the South and North Ends, etc., and even these areas are very large. I’m going to use the South End as an example. There are 17 or 18 community subgroups within the South End, which all focus around a social center. It really goes from the community, to the neighborhood, to the street. There is an issue in central Roxbury right now.

They are advocating for better access to public transportation. So this problem is community focused, but it is huge. Everybody participates, the city, the community, and each neighborhood.

Delgado: I like that sense of scale that you give when you talk about from the city to the neighborhood, from the neighborhood to the street or a square, from the square to the local house, from the house to the corridors, and then to the apartment and the room. There is a need in the urban life, in the human life actually, there is a need of transitions. There is not a way to pass from the city to the room directly, when this happens the situation is totally uncomfortable. There are many people that live next to a highway. To get this scale of detachment from the public to the private in several stages is very important. This is all about the quality of the site you are engaging. In the community design studio we are trying to demonstrate that we can reach those instances in a good way through a space or through different parts of a space.

It makes it very interesting because it is a challenge for the students; we want to help the community to understand that in order to get to the apartment, you have to move through the public space, then to the street, then to the neighborhood, then to the city. I can’t emphasize enough how much this scale is important for the quality of human life.

In–between & Transitional Space

Privatization

WAr: Whether a site is small or large, once it contains more than one building a space in-between is formed. What constitutes a proper relationship within the range of comfort?

WAr: To satisfy the desire for these outdoor spaces, accommodations for roof decks are often made. This privatizes the outdoor spaces somewhat. Do you think this privatization affects the sense of community within a neighborhood?

Zinter: With units there is a relationship to other units, and you list that it is the space between but it is maybe the energy between too, the dynamics between peoples or between habitations. One is kind of a formal context. Co-housing was originated in Denmark and tries to restore a missing link where everyone is sort of atomized, spread, and your friends are in Jamaica Plain or Cincinnati or San Diego but not on your block or on your street or in your building. So what they were trying to do was create a community, by people committing themselves, their lives, from people with families to the elderly, and singles, to just live together. They would invest in their own units; they would have mortgages, and to save on cost per square footage they would reduce the individual unit by about 10% and put that 10% into a commons building, a living room or dining room. The common spaces can expand to workshops, greenhouses, and recreation rooms and that sort of thing. But a community is more organic in that it just happens for historic reasons and ethnic group migrations. We’ve come from that to direct existing community involvement. We have not really tried to create anything new or envision any type of new community.

WAr: What constitutes a proper, or comfortable, transitional space?

Zinter: I guess there are four things to start.

One is privacy, both the feeling and acoustics.

The second is direct sunlight to the units.

It is a matter of orientation, blocking views or blocking sun. Natural ventilation would be the third. The fourth comes down to the precaution of how wide a space should be and how tall the buildings around it should be. There was a handout that described how there is a link between proportion and outdoor space. Of course we bring up City Hall Plaza with its 10,000 people and they are talking about designing a small outdoor space seating 50. How do these constraints make the space comfortable?

Delgado: I would like to add the contact of nature to those four qualities Herman mentioned. There are degrees of contact with nature in each step of the scale of transition, but this is the relation that connects all the steps. In all the stages and scales we find some relationship to natural life.

Delgado: The roof garden can be a stage in transition between the private and more public life. There are always some stages that are semi-private life. The discovery of the roof garden is not new. The use of the roof on other cities, for example Paris, is very common. Probably because large compacted buildings in a city often don’t allow for much contact with the sun. You also get a whole new perspective of a city from the roof. Along with that, this fifth façade of the building, known as the roof, is not going to waste. If you connect this with the use of natural resources, energy efficiency, or capturing rainwater, I think the use of the roof is very efficient in this new way of life being more in contact with its environment.

Zinter: Roof gardens actually evolved out of green roofs; they have historically been used for a long time. But, vegetated roofs are used environmentally for heat island effect rather than visual aesthetics. For those who live near the roof or on the roof, for those who live in a penthouse, the extension of outdoor space is naturally just theirs. When it comes to units sharing a roof, I think, from what I have understood, it is hard to ensure liabilities for damages, so in response it is hard to have a collective roof garden. To grasp a sense of community usually spaces occupied on the ground are resorted to, such as cafes and bars. The truth about the use of outdoor space in community living lies in the individual unit. Whether it is a balcony, a deck, or a patio or courtyard; something they can go to that is in direct sun, outdoors, and close to nature. The higher the density, the harder it is to achieve. Especially when it is not such a great atmosphere and not so pleasing to the eye for a façade to be lined with balcony after balcony. You find some balconies that are very well done with barriers between each individual balcony that is very close to another.

It is still an issue if your neighbor smokes, or if a chatter is loud, or the music is high. The visual privacy is maybe the only issue that can be solved.

WAr: That noise and chatter can also be viewed as enhancing the community. What do you think?

Zinter: That’s interesting because, bringing the courtyard in Latino communities back up the streets that are very blank. Everything is focused in the courtyard, but you only have two or three walls with doors separating it from the street.

Delgado: Well, yes, in some of the Latino cultures, especially in the Caribbean where it is hot and very sunny all year round you need to find a place of shadow. The idea of the shadow is something very important. For example, narrow streets create the shadow which make them much more comfortable than an open, lighted street. Then you have the courtyard. These represent the private and the public. Courtyards here are like courtyards in Islamic culture where they are very rich with activity and naturally created with vegetation and animals. But there is a clear separation between the interior and the exterior urban life that is usually dry and not in the midst of shadow in the warm weather.

What I see here, this idea of a detached house, or separation between houses is not happening in those cultures and that makes communities in some ways more tightly knit together. They have a private life but they have an active life outdoors in the streets and on the corners and so on and that is important as well.

What I see here, this idea of a detached house, or separation between houses, is not happening in those cultures and that makes communities in some ways more tightly knit together.

Modern Family WAr: Another area of evolution in the modern day is family dynamic. Do new family concepts call for a new housing type?

Zinter: There is a new kind of living that has been proposed, so called a “micro-unit,” which is a living unit of 300 sq. ft. or less for singles and professionals. The polls that have been taken suggest that these singles don’t need a living space. That is not their social center. They go to the pub, the bars around, the plaza, wherever. So to make the housing more affordable they create these very small units so they can condense quite a large amount of them together.

Delgado: This complements the idea that indoor life and outdoor life is completely different. Now there are two new phenomena that have been happening recently. One, your work environment and your living environment are becoming the same. Many people are working from their homes. The other thing is that people tend to live in several places in the world and have multiple homes. The mobility of one person’s “community” is different than it was before.

My family I remember used to have a house in Caracas for 30 years, then after that they decided to move and now they never spend more than 5 years in one place. In the beginning the tradition was to stay in one house. The relationship between the large family and its house and then the community was very strong. In contemporary times families are spread all over the place. More and more people tend to live alone, to work in the same unit, and then also have the possibility to move around different places and belong to multiple communities at the same time. These people have different

experiences in each of the places they live and work because they can carry their work everywhere they go. And also another difference, like Herman mentioned, is that people are used to living alone rather than the family structure of living with children, parents, and elderly grandparents. Even though local communities also tend to favor the possibility of building units with more rooms for family oriented people that want to live with their family rather than alone.

They are trying to keep the opportunity for family living including structures like schools, caring and play areas for children and things

like that because families are too spread out and they need to be connected again and reach their values again.

Zinter: Living alone is cited to be the more dominant way of living nowadays. I think the other thing that is showing up more now is single parenting. What it suggests is that the parent needs to connect with other adults in some way or another. Whether that’s more of a co-housing situation, or the other model is the dorm suite, in which there are multiple single rooms that share one common space. That might be a better market fit for those who are single parents to urge social interaction for their own mental health. They can talk to adults rather than children all day.

They also now have some kind of support system in parenting.

Delgado: There are two positions in that sense. On one hand you have the same type of people living together. For example, people who need assisted living all come together to live and students all live together in a dorm.

I feel that breaks the sensation of being in a city, adding uniformity to the variety of people.

I tend to favor more the opportunity to live with a variety. Like when young people live in the same building as the old, they benefit from each other; the experience of the elderly and the excitement of the young. Even though there are sometimes problems like noise I think that is the proper experience of living in a community instead of trying to be the same. So for example South Boston, being developed now with a lot of small lofts for young professionals, or the South End where they have a lot of white people living together in the same community more or less with the same orientation. There are other areas designed more for the family because of the cost of living or because of the existing school systems. The city tends to ‘specialize’ and in that way you lose the opportunity to share and learn from others and I think that is a very important experience as well.

Zinter: There is a position we took in the studio where instead of the order of family housing, it was diffused throughout the community. I think the key in that is choice.

Some people can’t wait to live alone in more quietness and away from kids and so forth.

I think the market already provides choice, claiming this apartment is better than that apartment, which all comes back to this sort of attributes list we formed in studio in which you can find variety in choice.

WAr: Thank you Professor Zinter and Professor Delgado.

All Content

Inclusivity

Credits

Professor - Herman Zinter

Sam Altieri, 4th year Lucy Brown, 4th year Julie Bruton, 4th year Carol Burns, Professor Kevin Conant, 4th year Stephen DeMayo, 3rd year Matthew DesSureault, MArch 12 Justin Dias, 4th year Brendan Galinauskas, 2nd year Sinead Gallivan, 4th year Nick Gianetti, 4th year Corey Gibbons, 2nd year Liz Glavin, 1st year Nate Gove, 4th year Danielle Gray, 4th year Steven Hien, 4th year Seth Hopewell, 2nd year James Jarzyniecki, MArch 12 Mandy Johnson, MArch 12 Rebecca Leclerc, MArch 12 Bryan Madrigal, 4th year Joseph Meucci, MArch 13 Mike Morris, 4th year Marc J. Neveu, WIT Alum. / Professor Bao Nguyen, 4th year Sam Partington, 4th year Kaitlyn Payne, 4th year Andrew Potter, MArch 12 Joe Saporetti, 3rd year Francesco Stumpo, 2nd year Bradley Taris, 4th year Liem Than, 4th year Rob Trumbour, Professor Aaron Willette, WIT Alum.

Sam Walusimbi, 4th year James White, 4th year Craig Zygmund, 4th year

Sam Altieri Kevin Conant Shaun Doscher Casey Galante Steven Hien Joseph Meucci Bao Nguyen Sam Partington John Pughe Noelle Rhodes Bradley Taris Phil Tomlinson Chelsea Vollmer

Connectedness Professor - Erik Miller Katherine Bujalski Kevin Estano Nate Gove Melissa Guertin Deirdre Horan Corey Leblanc Jennifer Roza Elizabeth Webb James White Michael Wojnarowicz Craig Zygmund

Blurring the Edge Professor - Margarita Iglesia Jeffrey Bento Maria Berthaume Shannon Bird Samuel Blodgett Marina Fathalla Nick Gianetti Chelsea Hall Benjamin Leedy James Mackey Ghazi Majall Nicholas Paigo Taylor Ruzzo Victoria Vernali All of the work shown in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Community Designâ&#x20AC;? was produced by fourth year students.

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WENTWORTH ARCHITECTURE REVIEW