RE/FUSE by Yvonne Demitra Konstantinidis

re/fuse

re/fuse y.d. konstantinidis selected work

re/fuse: To program political and social concerns into the physical fabric of space. The work presented within this book is the culmination of ten years of academic and professional practice. It traces a struggle to understand how architecture can become a process of re/fusal: refusing inherited ideologies and definitions of architecture, while re-fusing the conceptual with the built. Each project is preceded by a term that defines its principle desire.

Project Title, Professor/Office/Obsession, Collaborators, Location, Year, Page Numbers.

Atmosphere and Urban Energy, Peter Zumthor, Mendrisio (Switzerland), 2005, pp. 1-5.

Urban Stitching. Peter Zumthor, with Luca Farinelli + Martin Michette, Mendrisio, 2005, pp. 9-13.

Zona Franca Masterplan, Elias Zenghelis+Josep Acebillo, Mendrisio, 2006, pp. 17-23.

No. 60 Walcot Street, Bath University Thesis, 2007, pp. 27-39.

Legacy Masterplan Framework, AECOM, London, 2007-2010, pp. 43-49.

Capture Re-Use, Christoph Kumpusch, GSAPP, 2010, pp. 53-55.

Thickened Light, Karla Rothstein, GSAPP, 2012, pp. 59-63.

Hinged Living, Jeffrey Johnson, with Nicholas Reiter, GSAPP, 2011, pp. 67-73.

Face-Lift/Space-Maker, David Benjamim, GSAPP, 2012, pp. 77-83.

Corporate Voids, David Benjamin / C-Bip, with Joe Brennan + Ben Brennan + Kim Nguyen, GSAPP, 2012, pp.87-105.

Shifting Ground, Marc Tsurumaki, GSAPP, 2012, pp. 109-123.

Industrial Loft, Technology V, with Alan Paukman + Evan Remington, GSAPP, 2012, pp. 127-135.

Blend, lot-ek + Tomas Demonchaux, GSAPP, 2013, pp. 139-147.

Prime Produce NY, 6000 sqf Alt. Type 1, Troupe + Slab Architecture, 2012-present, pp. 151-159.

The Universal and the Spiritual in the Work and Thought of Theo Van Doesburg, Kenneth Frampton, GSAPP, 2011, pp. 165-173.

The Generic City in S,M,L,XL, Mark Wigley, GSAPP, 2011, pp. 177-184.

Occupy Wall Street: The Utilization And Role of Social Media and Public Space Within Contemporary Political Activism, Reinhold Martin, GSAPP, 2012, pp. 187-194.

re/energize

Atmosphere and Urban Energy Peter Zumthor Mendrisio, Switzerland 2005

Overview:// The two semesters were divided into a series of short research and design projects each focusing on the analysis of Milanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban energy and atmosphere at varying scales. This analysis formed the breeding ground for final proposals and interventions. Morphological Research:// The focus of the first semester was to explore Milan, both central and periphery, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the city through first hand experience. Abstract questions focusing on the emotional rather than the empirical were posed and explored as a means of gaining this understanding. [...Where is the love in Milan? Where is the greatest urban energy

in Milan? Where do I feel the mountains? Where is the heart in Milan? Where do I lose myself in Milan?...] // The spaces found were documented and modeled, in an attempt to capture and recreate their inherent atmosphere and urban energy and to answer the questions posed. Simultaneously, the city was analyzed from a strategic level, through the exploration of its landmarks, urban legibility and orientation, natural morphology, the relationship between open and built space, the nature of its public spaces, and entrances and frontages. All questions were documented through photography and the creation of a central model upon which the students recreated their findings. // 1

fig.1 - Abandoned Periphery

The concentration of the visibly deprived (rough sleepers) was documented and mapped as a means of understanding the economic & social complexity of people and place. A concentration of visible

poverty surrounded public transportation interchanges especially in affluent areas of the city. The public rail transportation (the subway) acted not only as the face poverty, but also as the cause: in many 2

fig. 2 - Tangenziale Est

areas of the city existing urban fabric has been severed by large overground railway infrastructure. These breaks in the urban

fabric have created inaccessible pockets previously occupied by industry, and now abandoned and taken over by squatters.

fig. 3 - Collective Atmospheric Model

fig. 4 - ‘Where Is The Poverty’ Documentation

re/connect

Urban Stitching Peter Zumthor + Luca Farinelli + Martin Michette Mendrisio, Switzerland 2005

Infiltration:// Lambrate Station forms one of the key gateways into Milan from the east, and lies at the dividing line between centre and periphery. A 30 metre wide elevated railway runs through the centre of the area, and divides the tight urban fabric to the west with the poorly planned industrial areas to the east. This short intervention focused on the regeneration of the disconnected areas to the east through the insertion of public space. A linear park was proposed alongside the eastern edge of the wall, linking existing and proposed uses and providing a direct connection between disconnected residential and commercial areas and the station interchange to the north.

The strategy is based on four principles: Tension: (fig 5a) To tie Lambrate back to Milan, generate new dialogue and preserve density. Gateway: (fig. 5b) Identification of main point of interchange (existing) between the two communities and beyond. Concentration: (fig. 5c) Dense layering of public functions over network, with physical connections balanced to enable interaction whilst preserving identity. Network: (fig. 5d) Creation of pedestrian network along seam, which serves both communities and feeds the gateway.

fig. 5a-d (clockwise from top left) - Stitching Strategy

fig. 6 - Existing and Proposed Qualities of the Wall

fig. 7 - The Wall; From Barrier to Reciprocal Identity

fig. 8/9 - Existing Spatial Division/ Proposed Park

re/center shifted groundPos doluptis aliam nost, qui rem quuntem que vitassum que sed ut as expero enis magnam, omni aut lab imaiore voluptatur, et ius, torrumqui dis doluptasitas delibus daectum verro mod

etur sum laborup tassusciis ipis exceaquo mo dus et, odignimusam et ex earion prores exeritius, autemqu iducite mporem fugitam fuga. Ti doluptio blabo. Itatemp ostrumquam, intio. Feris que dolorro 15

Zona Franca Masterplan Elias Zenghelis + Josep Acebillo + L. Farinelli/A. Stoppani/O. Maradiaga/D. Lorenzato Mendrisio, Switzerland 2005

Housing-led Regeneration: As part of its 2004-2010 Housing Plan, Barcelona City Council planned to deliver between 65,000 and 100,000 new dwellings. Barcelonaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban planning schemes were formulated in terms of internal transformation rather than growth in the outskirts; focussing predominantly on the regeneration of brown field sites at the far ends of the city. Shifting Centres: the Densification of West Barcelona: The Zona Franca District, located at the mouth of the Llobregat River, is one of Barcelonaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s principle sites undergoing strategic regeneration. In this context, the masterplan needed to respond to and consider the latest trends in urban

strategies: reconsidering the planning process and regulations, studying building densities, occupation levels, the mix of uses, and the relationship between urban systems (based on the quantification of the land available for green spaces, facilities, and housing). Covering an area of 57 Ha, the site is located in the heart of a transforming district; with the construction of the Barcelona Fiera to the north, new commercial districts to the west and east, and a proposed regional park to the south.

fig. 10 - Regional Masterplan

fig. 11 - 1:500 Site Model

fig. 12 - Open Space Typologies

urban farms public infrastructure gardens park hardscaped public space

fig. 13 - View of Central Public Space

a1 a2

A // Wall Typology: a1: large commercial units a2: housing a3: live/work units a4: residential services

B // Public Platform: b1: public realm b2: car parking with public uses b3: basement car parking

D c1

marketplace

civic voids

central park

C // Tower Typology: c1: housing c2: community space/housing foyer

D // Public Space Network: d1: lawns d2: community gardens d3: recreation/leisure d3: marketplace 23

re/distribute

No. 60 Walcot Street Thesis Project Bath University 2007

Medium Brown:// The project brief outlined the need for future development within the city of Bath to be situated within brownfield sites as a means of driving regeneration in deprived areas. With the opportunity of writing your own brief, each student was responsible for the choice of site, programme and size of building. After a period of in depth research and analysis, I felt it appropriate to propose a new central library for the city of Bath on a site currently used for car parking. Connecting Bath to a Networked Society:// Current library provision in the City of Bath is significantly lower than national standards. Bath Central library is located on the first floor of a shopping 27

centre, in a space that is unfit for purpose and lacks street presence. // A new facility, providing for the needs of all residents of Bath and North East Somerset (173,700 people) and the student population (26,184 people), was deemed to be of great necessity. Connecting local & global:// Local with local: the site lies strategically on an axis connecting Bathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s outdoor public spaces. Pedestrians on either side of the river can now move with ease, as a bridge extends from the Cornmarket and a new urban Park gazes up towards Walcot Street. // Local with global: survi[rtual] val of the fittest. In a world dependent on information technology, the survival of the fittest depends on access to information.

fig. 15 - Regional Network

The Library remains the only public provision for the equal distribution and access of information. A global gateway is constructed. Building as public object: // The intention to use the

building as a public object was established. Considerations of how the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s roof could be used as an urban amphitheater were made. A narrow pedestrian route created by the negative space between the

fig. 16 - Patchwork of Movement + Stasis

Cornmarket and the Library lead the public to a river terrace. The building becomes an extruded riverside walk. The service block and Cornmarket form two book ends, through which exterior and interior public

routes are created. The lines of the ribs lead you down to the Cornmarket Bridge, to the public river terrace, leading you to Pultney Bridge, Henrietta Park or the new Book Park opposite. Patchwork Of

fig. 17 - Ground Floor/ Foyer + Quick Select Bookshop

Movement & Stasis: // Inspired by the movement of people in libraries; a constant melody of movement and stasis is created. The books lead you from one reading space to the next connecting different

atmospheres through the contents of their stories. Newspapers and current events lead the public into the information market place. Fiction connects the casual to the academic. Non fiction connects the

fig. 18 - Information Marketplace

academic to the tranquil riverside. As you move from the reading rooms through the book ramps you descend into a labyrinth of low diffused light and as you weave through the walls of books you once again

ascend into the light. Homogeneous Expression. Solid/Void: // Expressing the movement and the use of the spaces through different roofing systems resulted in a fragmented building form. A single 31

section aa

fig. 19 - Level -1 /Information Marketplace + Auditorium + Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Library

gesture was created that connected the building from Walcot Street down to the river. The section became the tool of differentiation allowing the temporal and kinetic qualities of the space to be

expressed. // A solid book wall descends from Walcot Street to the River, it is offset to facilitate for the movement of people as they browse for books; a language of solid movement and voids of stasis. LVL

fig. 20 - Auditorium + Stacks

hollow box ribs & internal timber finishing: // The intention for the new Central Library to be welcoming, transparent, warm and bright informed the decision of using Timber as the

buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s principle material. This choice provided many solutions simultaneously to different design issues. For example, the direction of the exposed laminated veneers, and timber floor boards help

fig. 21 - Level -2 /Archives + Microfiche History Center

in emphasizing the principle movement from Walcot Street down to the River. // Other than satisfying spatial/atmospheric and efficient structural intentions, timber is renewable and has a very low embodied

energy. Sourced from Northern Europe, the cost and environmental effect of transportation is also reduced. // Side laminated Glulam beams were originally considered for the construction of the

fig. 22 - Level -3 / Stack Ramps + Relaxation Reading Area

hollow box ribs. However, Kerto-Q (LVL) was deemed more appropriate due to its stiffness, strength, straightness, and

dimensional stability. Providing for the most efficient solution.

fig. 23 - Transverse Section

a2 a4

fig. 24 - Beam Construction

a1: weather-proofing (water kept out by oxidised copper flashing) a2: insulation (structure kept warm by wrapping of rigid insulation) a3: fins (180x10 mm patinated copper fins supported by joint

fin/glazing structural system at 3 m c/c) a4: rotation (180x10 mm patinated copper fins held in hinged frame to accommodate for easy roof maintenance a5: glazing (100 mm deep double

fig. 25 - Building Elements

glazing unit spanning 2.5m) a6: moment connection (steel plate transfering moment through to concrete foundation) a7: rib joints (400 mm polymer dowels

fixed with resin embedded in finger joints between hollow box beams) b1: lvl hollow ribs, b2: hollow copper fins, b3: double glazing

re/generate

Legacy Masterplan Framework (LMF) AECOM + Allies & Morisson + KCAP London 2007-2010

The Team: Employed as part of the Legacy Masterplan Framework team, my first six months at AECOM were focused on the preparation of the proposal for the Legacy Commission. Working alongside Allies and Morrisson and KCAP, AECOM were commissioned in January of 2008 to design the framework and prepare the planning application scheduled for submission in 2009. The ultimate purpose of the LMF is to provide a framework that will guide the long-term development of the Olympic site, while allowing for an appropriate degree of flexibility in relation to the detailed form, scale and amount of development in each specific part of the site. // The Process: A close knit team

of town and socio-economic planners, landscape architects, urban designers, ecologists, infrastructure, utility and transport engineers, and property consultants were brought together to prepare the groundwork for the framework masterplan. Over a period of six months, the design and planning teams analyzed the spatial and socio-economic context of the Olympic Park region. The vision for the park was developed on the basis of this analysis and the role of the LMF in shaping a sustainable, inclusive future for London was made indubitable. // The vision for the park to be a catalyst for change, a model of sustainability, and an integrated and inclusive piece of city

5 min

Leyton

A12

Stratford International

Maryland

Hackney Wick

Stratford Regional

10 m

Pudding Mill Lane 5 min

A12

West Ham

Bow Church

5 min

Bow Rd

Bromley-By-Bow

fig. 26 - Legacy Masterplan Character Areas DO NOT SCALE THIS DRAWING. NOTES:

Copyright: London Delivery Authority ("LDA"). All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, by photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of a director. Except where otherwise expressly agreed in writing, the LDA shall have no responsibility or liability for any loss (direct, consequential or otherwise) which may arise from reliance on or use of this document or the information contained in it.

Client

SAFETY, HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT INFORMATION Based on the use of experienced and competant contractors working to an approved method statement list unusual residual hazards / risks are listed below or the statement 'No Unusal Risks'

Creator

Drawing Title

fabric was bolstered by client, stakeholder it contain, and what balance of tenure? and consultant alike. The challenge was How much retail, commercial and other DRAFT: WORKING DRAWING the design of the delivery strategy and land uses would be situated where? How mechanism; what would this new piece of would it connect with the existing context city look like? How much housing would and communities? How would it unlock Construction

Colour edited, walk nets and centres information added

General Revision

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London Development Agency

Centres of Gravity - Places of Exchange

THE LMF DESIGN TEAM

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Legacy Masterplan Framework

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test the opportunities and limitations that flow from different densities, distribution of open spaces, allocation of facilities, types of housing, division of uses, and circulation, three capacity bandwidths

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fig. 27 - Masterplan Layers

the latent potential of the Lower Lea Valley and the site? How would it build on the inheritance of the Olympic Games? How would it be phased, and what would happen in the interim years? // In order to

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fig. 28 - Legacy Park

were tested: an FAR of 4.0 to 3.0, an FAR of 3.0-2.0 and an FAR of 2.0-1.0. City references were used as typologies of each respective FAR and density and plugged into the different development

sites around the park. Each model was then tested against certain criteria and its positive and negative characteristics were enumerated and discussed. This process allowed for initial area testing,

fig. 29/30 - Aquatic Center/Stratford Village Allotments

yielding unit numbers and an overall understanding of the capacity potential of the site. Each area was then analyzed

individually to assess the appropriate density and block typology according to its context and inherit character.

fig. 31 - Stratford Waterfront Building Typology

fig. 32 - Stratford Village Building Typology

re/use

Capture Re-Use Christoph Kumpusch GSAPP, New York 2010

Harvesting human energy for water filtration and the empowerment of the individual. Could the human energy expended in an environment like the Dharavi slum in Mumbai be captured and

re-used through simple low-tech systems? An anatomical vest is designed using piezoelectric technology to transform wasted kinetic energy into stored electrical energy.

fig. 33 - Dharavi Slum, Mumbai

fig. 34 - Capture Re-Use Vest Section

re/learn

Thickened Light Karla Rothstein GSAPP, New York 2011

Urban silence: The program of the public library was recombined with the idea of urban sanctuary. // Exquisite Corpse was used as a method to explore the systematic relationships and dynamics between different materials. These material studies unleashed new potential in the interpretation of both program and space. Gradient of knowledge acquisition: In todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fragmented society we are lacking spaces of respite and darkness. Spaces that allow one to pause and to look within, to reflect and to realize. // The space of the city is bombarded with fragmented information, words and images that have lost their meaning and substance. Breaking away from the media dominated street, and the

privately owned public spaces, the library is one of the few truly public and accessible spaces left in the city. // The distribution and sectional organization of the collections and programs within the library allow for the shedding of fragmented knowledge, of noise and pollution. The building twists, to allow for different intensities of light, darkness and views. The twisting stacks lead the public on a journey of walking meditation, repeatedly connecting and disconnecting from the city. // Spaces of meditation are embedded within moments of intense darkness.

fig. 35 - Vertical Adjacencies/Movement & Stasis

fig. 36 - Horizontal Adjacencies/Movement & Stasis

fig. 37 - Material Studies

fig. 38 - Urban Sanctuary Section

re/work

Hinged Living Jeffrey Johnson + Nicholas Reiter GSAPP, New York 2011

Hinged between urban autonomy and dependence, the cooperative living and production model empowers the individual while amplifying the demands of the collective. // We resist the wave of privatization that is washing this city with its sterile brush, and in turn push to find a new model for development and land ownership that profits local communities instead of millionaires. // The Pathmark currently existing on the site is removed and replaced with a superstructure containing light industrial, manufacturing, and commercial activities. Emerging from the superstructure are two towers housing hydroponic growing systems. Shareholders of the cooperative own a

percentage of working and living space, and actively participate in the running of the system. // Living modules each contain five units, ranging from studios to five beds and are designed around a system of hinged walls. Family units can expand and contract within the five unit module. These are clustered around Local Production Units (LPUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s) that provide space for local businesses and activities, while forming the bridge between the growing towers and the living units. // This project does not seek to optimize one program element over another but to expand our understanding of how the city can provide a more direct democratic model for living and creating.

fig. 39/40 - Agricultural/Manufacturing Production Models

growing tower housing clusters local production units

fig. 41/42 - Expansion of Mixed-Use Condition/ Housing Cluster Organization

fig. 43 - 125th Street View

fig. 44/45/46 - Aquaponic Belt/ Marketplace/ Local Production Unit

fig. 47 - Z-Module Housing Units

fig. 48 - Z-Module Aggregation

re/wrap

Face-Lift/Space-Maker David Benjamin/C-Bip GSAPP, New York 2012

The function of the facade has been reduced to that of environmental mediator. This element inserts itself into the politically active zone of the envelope and seeks to capitalize on its role both as a mediator (between outside and inside, natural and artificial, public and private) and as a representational device. Questions of value (financial, social and environmental) have been explored through the expansion and re-qualification of this space. // With Alejandro Zaera-Polo’s The Politics of the Envelope and Slavoj Zizek’s Architectural Parallax; Spandrels and Other Phenomena of Class Puggle as two distinct points of departure, the focus of this project was the space between inside

and outside, between the public and the private realms. According to Zizek, “there is always an excess of a third space which gets lost in the division of Outside and Inside”. This third space (the zone of the building envelope) was the site upon which the parasitic Face-lift/Space-maker was deployed. // The boundary between the public and the private is as much imaginary as it is physical. To create a third space requires the transformation of notion’s of publicity and privacy and is directly dependent upon the user. // The Face-lift/Space-maker is based on three principles: Sustain? Regenerate: Is the current system worth sustaining? Linear + Exponential economic growth? The 1% 77

fig. 49 - The Politics of the Envelope

vs. 99% distribution of wealth and power? Destructive environmental practices?; Community Empowerment through open source and web-based data management and visualization software;

Parametric Design as an Enabler of real time community and designer collaboration. The Face-lift/Space-maker is: An organizing device for the adaptation/ expansion of a building facade; A web-

fig. 50 - Outputs + Advantages

based platform that enables residents to share information about the services they need and can provide, the objects they own

and are willing to share, and the spaces in their homes that they are able to share for community uses.

fig. 51 - Face Lift Space Maker Parametric Module

fig. 52 - Face Lift Space Maker Aggregation + Expansion

fig. 53 - Parametric Grid System For Existing Facades

fig. 54 - 3D Envelope Expansion

re/open

Corporate Voids David Benjamin/C-Bip + Joe Brennan + Ben Brennan + Kim Nguyen GSAPP, New York 2012

This project proposes a building strategy for Emery Roth & Sonsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; AXA Financial Tower on Avenue of the Americas. To meet energy compliance, the building recently replaced its entire facade. This project proposes that investments that are made to make a building energy compliant can be combined with space making strategies that in turn introduce new modes of occupation and accessibility. // As part of an overall strategy to reduce the energy consumption of the tower, we propose the insertion of public voids. The reduction of the floor plate allows for cross ventilation and natural lighting, ultimately reducing the energy consumption (and cost) of the building. The introduction of public spaces

within the office tower, in combination with a shift in corporate management strategy (that favors open plans and informal spaces) results in an increase in worker productivity. // From the turn of the 20th century, New York City building legislation was geared towards increasing the quality of life of its inhabitants, through light and air rights and the introduction of the Bonus Plaza. Over the last few decades, however, legislation and allowances are used only as a means to increase profit for the land owners and developers. // The Corporate Voids project is based on four main concepts: 1. Sky Parks Evolution of the bonus plaza typology into (publicly owned) public spaces inserted

High Impact/Low Integration

High Impact/ Medium Integration

fig. 55 - Voiding Strategies

into corporate towers to create a new landscape of publicly accessible space. 2. Decentralization of Power and Wealth: Breaking lines of tension and hierarchy between people traditionally

separated by divisions of status or space 3. Rethinking the Office: The large floor plates of generic corporate towers are a direct result of the advent of mechanical ventilation, fluorescent lighting and the

Medium Impact/High Integration

Low Impact/ High Integration

elevator. The subdivision of space, with the executives occupying the corner offices and the subordinates neatly divided into cubicles is now being reconsidered by corporate management. It turns out that people are

more productive when they are not enclosed in a box. How can this new trend be used by designers to restructure hierarchies, control, and surveillance within the corporate office? 4. Providing Incentives: Regulation

fig. 56 -Midtown Bonus Plazas

of corporations through policy changes that encourage environmental and social responsibility. // Measures of Success:// The success of the building strategy was measured by a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;parametric

dashboardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; that compared and contrasted our somewhat contradicting desires for the project. In order to make the voiding strategy economically feasible and conceptually desirable, it needed to be

fig. 57/58 -Decentralization of Power + Wealth/Rethinking the Office

justified with a significant reduction in the buildings energy use. The insertion of public space into the tower would result

in the destabilization of existing power structures, whilst creating a new datum from which the city could be experienced.

fig. 59 - Workflow

INTEGRATION

100% 0%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

100%

EMPLOYEE COMFORT HUMAN INTEGRATION

SKYPARKS

public

fig. 60 - Parametric Dashboard

60% 70% 70% 60%

OVERLAP OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

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10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100% UTILITY COST ($)

CARBON EMISSIONS ( lbs CO2 )

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DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER AND WEALTH

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corporate

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Incentive Policy

Sanitation reducing coverage

Light+Air per room standards

Profit

Light+Air setback + skyplane

Density Reduction

Profit

fig. 61 - Relationship of Incentive to Policy Over Time

Democratization of Skyline

Increased Open Public Space

Vertical Green Datums

fig. 62 - Proposed Incentives

Organic Decay

USER INPUTS

input point public or corporate

VOID INTELLIGENCE

VOID INTELLIGENCE height depth width area of influence distance to core

height depth width area of influence distance to core

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total volume total footprint area of influence volume distance from core indication

Void width related to distance from Ground

USER INPUTS

input point public or corporate

VOID INTELLIGENCE

height depth width area of influence distance to core

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total volume total footprint area of influence volume distance from core indication

Void height related to distance from North Corner

Distance to core indicated by panelization

USER INPUTS

input point public or corporate

VOID INTELLIGENCE

height depth width area of influence distance to core

VOID OUTPUTS

total volume total footprint area of influence volume distance from core indication

Void depth related to distance from South Corner

Corporate Void

fig. 63 - Parametric Dashboard

Parametric Void:// A parametric udf (user defined feature) in Catia was designed in order to measure the results of different densities and distributions of voids. Starting with a singular point,

the user defines the central axis of the void as well as its use type (corporate or public). With in built intelligence, the void would then adapt its height (depending on its distance from the north corner),

USER INPUTS

input point public or corporate

VOID INTELLIGENCE height depth width area of influence distance to core

VOID OUTPUTS

total volume total footprint area of influence volume distance from core indication

Public Void

USER INPUTS

input point public or corporate

VOID INTELLIGENCE height depth width area of influence distance to core

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total volume total footprint area of influence volume distance from core indication

Corporate Void Influence

USER INPUTS

input point public or corporate

VOID INTELLIGENCE height depth width area of influence distance to core

VOID OUTPUTS

total volume total footprint area of influence volume distance from core indication

Public Void Influence

depth (depending on its distance from the south corner), and width (depending on its distance from the ground). The void outputs data, including its volume, footprint, area of influence (depending

on its use designation), and distance from core. This data would then be shared between CATIA and grasshopper to update the parametric dashboard.

INTEGRATION

SKYPARKS

fig. 64 - Void Placement Showing In-built Intelligence of Void DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER AND WEALTH

EMPLOYEE SPONTANEITY 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

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VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

60% 70% 70% 60%

FLOOR AREA REMOVED ( ft2 )

TOTAL VOID VOLUME

UTILITY COST ($)

CARBON EMISSIONS ( lbs CO2 )

ENERGY USE INTENSITY ( MBtu )

PLUG LOADS ( MBtu )

VALUE (SOCIAL)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

HEATING / COOLING LOADS ( Mbtu )

LIGHT LOADS ( Mbtu )

100%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

DISRUPTION FACTOR

PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

COST (C02 TAX)

FIELD OF INFLUENCE

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

UTILITY COST ($)

OVERLAP OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

VALUE (SOCIAL) 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

100%

COST ($)

EMPLOYEE COMFORT

public

NUMBER OF VOIDS

HUMAN INTEGRATION

CARBON EMISSIONS ( lbs CO2 )

SKYPARKS

FLOOR AREA REMOVED ( ft2 )

100%

PUBLIC VOID (PERCENT)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

ENERGY USE INTENSITY ( MBtu )

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

PLUG LOADS ( MBtu )

100% 0%

HEATING / COOLING LOADS ( Mbtu )

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

TOTAL VOID VOLUME

DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER AND WEALTH

PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

PROVIDING INCENTIVES

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

DISRUPTION FACTOR

OVERLAP OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

INTEGRATION

IMPACT ON BUILDING

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

EMPLOYEE COMFORT

LIGHT LOADS ( Mbtu )

COST (C02 TAX)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

VALUE (SOCIAL)

COST ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

EMPLOYEE SPONTANEITY

PUBLIC VOID (PERCENT)

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

PROVIDING INCENTIVES

IMPACT ON BUILDING

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

COST ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

RETHINKING THE OFFICE RETHINK

DECENTR POWER A

EMPLOYEE SPON

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

EMPLOYEE PROD

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

SKYPARK

EMPLOYEE COM

RETHINK

DECENTR POWER A

EMPLOYEE SPON

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

EMPLOYEE PROD 10 20 30 40 50 60 7

SKYPARK

EMPLOYEE COM

INTEGRATION

SKYPARKS

fig. 65 - Spheres of Influence (determined by program) EMPLOYEE SPONTANEITY

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

HUMAN INTEGRATION

public

corporate

15%

100%

FIELD OF INFLUENCE

DISRUPTION FACTOR

70%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

50% 50%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

100%

50% 50% 53% 54%

30%

RETHINKING THE OFFICE

ENERGY USE VOID IMPACT

70%

15%

VALUE (SOCIAL)

70%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

COST ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

corporate

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

40% 40% 40% 40%

NUMBER OF VOIDS

FLOOR AREA REMOVED ( ft2 )

ENERGY USE VOID IMPACT

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

TOTAL VOID VOLUME

UTILITY COST ($)

CARBON EMISSIONS ( lbs CO2 )

ENERGY USE INTENSITY ( MBtu )

PLUG LOADS ( MBtu )

VALUE (SOCIAL)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

HEATING / COOLING LOADS ( Mbtu )

LIGHT LOADS ( Mbtu )

COST (C02 TAX)

100%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

+/-

PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

VALUE (SOCIAL) 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

100%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

OVERLAP OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

FIELD OF INFLUENCE

COST ($)

EMPLOYEE COMFORT

public

UTILITY COST ($)

SKYPARKS

PUBLIC VOID (PERCENT)

100%

NUMBER OF VOIDS

HUMAN INTEGRATION

CARBON EMISSIONS ( lbs CO2 )

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

ENERGY USE INTENSITY ( MBtu )

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

PLUG LOADS ( MBtu )

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

HEATING / COOLING LOADS ( Mbtu )

100% 0%

FLOOR AREA REMOVED ( ft2 )

DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER AND WEALTH

LIGHT LOADS ( Mbtu )

EMPLOYEE COMFORT

PUBLIC VOID (PERCENT)

EMPLOYEE SPONTANEITY

PROVIDING INCENTIVES

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

TOTAL VOID VOLUME

INTEGRATION

IMPACT ON BUILDING

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER AND WEALTH

PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

COST (C02 TAX)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

VALUE (SOCIAL)

COST ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

DISRUPTION FACTOR

OVERLAP OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

PROVIDING INCENTIVES

IMPACT ON BUILDING

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

COST ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

RETHINKING THE OFFICE RETHINK

DECENTR POWER A

EMPLOYEE SPON

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

EMPLOYEE PROD

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

EMPLOYEE COMF

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

SKYPARK

RETHINK

DECENTR POWER A

EMPLOYEE SPON

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

EMPLOYEE PROD

EMPLOYEE COMF

10 20 30 40 50 60 7

SKYPARK

NCE fig. 66 - Fields of Influence: a. magnitude/ b. distortion/ c. contours of magnitude/ d. void strategy

100

AFTERNOON MARIACHI

101

COST ($)

INTEGRATION

EMPLOYEE COMFORT

fig. 67 - Magnetic Disturbance: a. inline low influence / b. lunchtime low action / c. morning yoga / d. afternoon mariachi 1%

EMPLOYEE SPONTANEITY

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

SKYPARKS

HUMAN INTEGRATION

corporate

40% 40% 40%

DISRUPTION FACTOR

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

100% 0%

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

100%

40% 40% 40%

100%

FIELD OF INFLUENCE

100%

99%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

99%

CARBON EMISSIONS ( lbs CO2 )

corporate

PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

FLOOR AREA REMOVED ( ft2 )

TOTAL VOID VOLUME

OVERLAP OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

CARBON EMISSIONS ( lbs CO2 )

ENERGY USE INTENSITY ( MBtu )

PLUG LOADS ( MBtu )

HEATING / COOLING LOADS ( Mbtu )

LIGHT LOADS ( Mbtu )

VALUE (SOCIAL)

COST (C02 TAX)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

100%

FLOOR AREA REMOVED ( ft2 )

SKYPARKS

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

HUMAN INTEGRATION

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

100%

ENERGY USE INTENSITY ( MBtu )

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

PUBLIC VOID (PERCENT)

100% 0%

PLUG LOADS ( MBtu )

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

HEATING / COOLING LOADS ( Mbtu )

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

TOTAL VOID VOLUME

DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER AND WEALTH

LIGHT LOADS ( Mbtu )

EMPLOYEE COMFORT

PROVIDING INCENTIVES

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

PUBLIC VOID (PERCENT)

INTEGRATION

DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER AND WEALTH

PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

COST (C02 TAX)

IMPACT ON BUILDING

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10

DISRUPTION FACTOR

OVERLAP OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE VOID (PERCENT)

VALUE (SOCIAL) 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

COST ($) 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

EMPLOYEE SPONTANEITY

PROVIDING INCENTIVES

IMPACT ON BUILDING

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

LUNCHTIME LOW ACTION RETHINKING THE OFFICE 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

VALUE ($)

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

NFLUENCE

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%

a FIELD OF INFLUENCE

DE PO

10 2

ENERGY USE EMP VOID IMPACT 10 2

EMP

10 2

EMP

DE PO

ENERGY USE VOID IMPACT EMP

10 2

EMP

10 2

EMP

fig. 68 - Dynamic Furniture: Afternoon Mariachi

102

fig. 69 -Dynamic Furniture: Lunch Time Low Action

103

fig. 70 - Social Experiment: Mariachi Band brought in to measure disturbance in final review

104

105

re/order

108

Shifting Ground Marc Tsurumaki GSAPP, New York 2012

The ground shifts, a new carpet of grass slowly grows over the New York City trash. The highway, the railway, and the hum of the ants below. The artificial becomes natural, and the natural artificial. Mobile living rooms aggregate on highway bridges, solemn faces looking through their wind shields at the flattened image of nature below.; we are in New Jersey.// Snake Hill, an igneous rock intrusion, juts up from the floor of the Meadowlands. From 1855 to 1962 Hudson County built and ran numerous penal and charitable institutions on the ridge of Snake Hill including an almshouse, penitentiary, hospital for the insane, contagious diseases hospital, and tuberculosis sanatorium. Heavy mining in the late 20th century reduced the

Hillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s footprint and height by half. // The rehabilitation center is inserted into Snake Hill and contains programs for the diagnosis and therapy of people with environmental illnesses. Long thought to be a psychological condition, the polluted landscape surrounding Snake Hill is used to measure the patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s toxic load capacity during rehabilitation. The program is divided into three stacked courtyard buildings that act as a filter. The interior spaces of the courtyard blocks contain (from top to bottom) residences for the inpatients, medical and therapy facilities, and laboratories for the research of environmental illnesses. Each courtyard is embedded into Snake Hill, creating a transition from darkness to light

109

little ferry

lyndhurst i rutherford i

lyndhurst ii north arlington i c2

north arlington ii

kearny iv

kearny v kearny iii secaucus

kearny ii

kearny i

household commercial industrial demolition + construction landscaping bulky

fig. 71 - Dumping Ground: the Artificial Ground Condition of the Meadowlands

within, as well as a gradient of control; as the patient begins to increase their toxic load, they are able to circulate in the more exposed spaces. Embedded within the rock are the therapy rooms and baths, which are publicly

accessible, allowing for an intermingling of the patient and public populations. All building users must be sterilized, to avoid setting off the patients. Traditional social barriers are broken by the enforcement of

110

fig. 72 - Shifting Relationship between figure/ground, nature/artificial

a single uniform. The spatial configuration of the courtyard is used to redefine notions of control, surveillance, nature, inside and

outside. The stacking and pulling apart of the courtyard blocks allows for a new in between space that contains all public functions.

111

fig. 73/74 -Maximum Control/Increased Porosity

112

fig. 75/76 - Vertical Courtyard/ Shifted Ground

113

fig. 77 - Schematic Sections

Diagnosis:// Spect brain scan: Single Photon emission computed tomography is performed with a “brain specific” radionuclide. Laboratory evaluation: blood, urine, adipose tissue for

xenobiotics: pesticides–organophosphates, organochlorides,–solvents, aromatic volatile hydrocarbons, ketones, aldehydes and metabolites, mold and mycotoxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, pentachlorophe-

114

RE-SUBMERSION

GYM

RECEPTION

GYM

ENTRANCE

AUDITORIUM

THERAPY + DIAGNOSTIC

CAFE

LIBRARY

RESTAURANT

INPATIENTS APODYTERIUM + SHOWERS + LOCKERS

fig. 78 - Schematic Plans

nol, pyrethroid metabolites, heavy metals, and chlorophenoxy herbicides; Breath Air Analysis for volatile organic compounds derived from the blood by passive diffusion across pulmonary alveolar membrane.

Therapy:// Sauna & detox: This outpatient means of treating toxic exposures is a six-day-per-week, physician-supervised program consisting of dry heat, exer-cise, massage, vitamin and mineral replacement,

115

fig. 79-81 -(top down) Publicly Accessible Terraces/Living Units/Therapy+Library+Open Space

administration of xenobiotic binding substances and monitoring of toxin levels in blood and/or fat tissue. Immunotherapy: A specialized type of vaccine treatment, which can provide substantial relief from

offending agents. During the skin testing pro-cess, exact treatment level, or â&#x20AC;&#x153;optimal dosage,â&#x20AC;? of each substance is established for the patient. Patient education: To do this successfully, the patients are educated

116

fig. 82-84 -(top down) Medical Facilities + Therapy/Botanical Garden+Reception+Pool/Labs

about their sensitivities and actively involved in carrying out their prescribed treatment plans. Nutrition: Based on the testing and evaluation process, the Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physicians determine an individualized therapy program

for each patient. Elimination or rotation diets, intelligent avoidance of incitants, nutritional supplementation, osteopathic manipulation and immunotherapy are some of the procedures often recommended.

117

fig. 85 - View of Reception Area Leading into Auditorium/Botanical Garden Above

118

fig. 86 - Schematic Design of Courtyards/Therapy Spaces

119

fig. 87 - View From Pool Through Central Courtyard

120

fig. 88 - Roof Terraces+Medical Facilities+Botanical Garden/Reception+Restaurant+Cafe

121

fig. 89 - Thermal Baths

122

fig. 90 - Outdoor Pool/Therapy Spaces+Auditorium+Living Units Above

123

re/assemble

126

Industrial Loft Technology V + Alan Paukman + Evan Remington GSAPP, New York 2012

Architectural Intention:// The seven story industrial loft building has been designed to house a local New York City based furniture manufacturer. The program brief required a welcoming flexible space on the ground floor that could accommodate a variety of uses including: reception, cafe, exhibition, showroom space, and a high capacity loading dock for the transportation of locally produced furniture. // The organization of the building is focused around a central atrium space that connects collaborative meeting rooms and social spaces both visually and physically. The atrium provides glowing natural light to the center of the floor plan while creating an organizational

center to the project. // The different manufacturing departments are located on the second through fourth floors and are connected by two large freight elevators as well as the central atrium staircase. They have been grouped together as a means of efficiently concentrating and streamlining their higher ventilation and structural requirements, as well as mitigating the acoustic disruption to the offices and design studios above. // The final floor is a collaborative loft space, organized horizontally and nonhierarchically around the central atrium. // The depth of the cantilevered floor slabs and material of the glazing system respond to the specific amount of sunlight on each

127

UP UP

fig. 91 - (top-down) Roof Plan/ Typical Plan / Ground Floor Plan / Foundation Plan

facade, mitigating glare and excessive heat gain. The floor slabs are accessible and provide a beautiful outdoor meeting space for the exchange of ideas and employee relaxation. // The clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minimal and

honest approach to design is reflected in the simplicity of the architecture, which aims to provide a calming and invigorating space for the production of innovative design. Structural System:// The

128

office

manufacturing

showroom + cafe + exhhibition + loading dock

fig. 92 - Cross Section Depicting Atrium Space

structure of the industrial loft building is comprised of cast-in-place concrete. Two cores, housing vertical circulation and mechanical equipment, with a footprint of 60’x25’, carry the building’s lateral

loads. 20”x20” columns are arranged in a 3x10 column grid to achieve 30’ structural spans. The columns’ articulated pyramidal capitals serve as an expressive architectural feature while also helping to

129

office

manufacturing

showroom + cafe + exhhibition + loading dock

fig. 93 - Longitudinal Section

increase the spans and reduce the possibility of punching shear. The capital depths range from 1’ below the slab, at the columns, and extend upwards to meet the normal 8” slab at the total span midpoints.

The space between the central columns is removed to create an atrium. This atrium, measuring 30’x28.3’, spans longitudinally between the inner edges of the two central columns, and transversely through the

130

central 30’ of the floor plan. // A 22” deep edge beam wraps around each slab above the perimeter columns to enable the building’s tapering, undulating, cantilevered balconies. The cantilevers

begin just beyond the edge beam with a total thickness of 16”. // The center of the edge beam marks the start of a 5’ wide zone between the perimeter columns and the building’s enclosure. // The floors of this

131

A-05 Exploded Atrium Detail

ATRIUM GLAZING 1” THICK 2’-9” x 5’-11” 3” x 8” KAWNEER MULLION ATRIUM 6’ C/C 4” x 12” STEEL BEAMS BOLTED TO PARAPET WALL 1/8” OVER 1’ SLOPED CONCRETE PARAPET WALL

1/2” HANDRAIL 3/8” CLEAR TEMPERED GLASS 5” x 6” STEEL PLATES (bolted to slab or stringer) 12” x 2” RECT. TUBE STEEL STRINGER 1” STEEL C-BRACKET WELDED TO STRINGER 1” STRUCT. GLASS LANDING/STEP STEEL SECTION GLASS SUPPORT

A-05 Atrium Stair Detail

A-05 Building Exploded Axon

A -302

title

Exploded Axon scale NTS

date 4.30.12

Y. Konstantinidis E. Remington A. Paukman

YEA

fig. 95 - (Clockwise from Top Left) Atrium Stair/ Atrium Skylight/ Exploded Building Axonometric

zone have insulation and flooring that are embedded 2” into the slab. To the exterior of this 5’ wide zone, the slab thickness tapers to a consistent 5” slab edge. This taper occurs across cantilever distances

ranging from 2’ to 7’. The cantilevered slabs are occupied and accessible from both the office and manufacturing spaces. // At the foundation level, each column has a footing that is 19’x’19’ in plan, which

132

fig. 96 - Typical Facade Construction

starts 3’6” below grade. At the edge of the slab-on-grade, a shallower, smaller 1’ wide perimeter footing helps carry the weight

of the first floor facade. The two cores also extend down to the footing level.

133

Roof 116’-0”

Balustrade Mounting Bracket A-01 SS 3”=1’-0” 7th Floor 88’-0” 1/4” [6mm]

KAWNEER 1600 MULLION SYSTEM

PANEL DIM

1” X 1” ANGLE BY KALWALL

1/4” [6mm]

PANEL DIM

DAYLIGHT OPENING DIM DAYLIGHT OPENING DIM

BACKER ROD AND SEALANT

2nd Floor 18’-0”

1/2” 1-1/8”

Detail / KALWALL A-02 Mullion 3”=1’-0”

O.D.

F.H./M.L.

R.D. R.D.

2-1/4”

1/2” 1-1/8”

Ground Floor 0’-0”

DLO

DLO O.D.

F.H./M.L.

2-1/4”

164-252 HORIZONTAL 128-112 #12 X 1-1/2” P.H.S.T. 164-011 1” GLASS STOP 163-314 PERIMETER FILLER 164-009 COVER

3’-6”

Detail / KAWNEER A-03 Mullion 3”=1’-0” MULLION SLEEVE 128-348 #10-16 X 1 1/4” FHST

9’-6” 128-267 #12 X 1” PHST

Section C-08 Building 1/2”=1’-0” DLO

Vertical Slice Joint

4”

/8 2-1

2-1/2” DLO

”

4”

2-1/2”

6”

DLO

O.D.

2-1/4”

F.W.

DLO

Section Cut A-03 3”=1’-0”

F.W. O.D.

Section Cut A-03 Corner 3”=1’-0”

Vertical Slice Joint

/ Footing Axon Cutaway C-08 Column 1/4”=1’-0”

fig. 97 - (Top Down Left-Right) Facade Section/ Column Footing Cutaway/ Balustrade Mounting Bracket/ Mullion Detail (Kalwall)/ Mullion Detail (Kawneer)/ Section + Corner Section Cut at Vertical Slice Joint

134

3/4” ENGINEERED HARDWOOD FLOORING

VAPOR BARRIER 1/2” STRUCTURAL GLASS BALUSTRADE

1-1/4” BLACK CLOSED CELL RIGID FOAM INSULATION

cket

1/8” OVER 1’ SLOPE

16”

EALANT

ION

WALL

12”

9”

VAPOR BARRIER

1-1/4” BLACK CLOSED CELL RIGID FOAM INSULATION

18”

5’

6”

7’

12’

Column Head / Cantilever Section A-04 1”=1’-0”

VAPOR BARRIER

2” CONCRETE PAVER

VAPOR BARRIER

GRAVEL BACKFILL

Joint

/ Footing Section A-05 Column 1”=1’-0”

l Slice Joint

fig. 98 - Column Head + Cantilever Section/Column Footing Section

A -201

title

Section Details scale noted

date 4.30.12

135

Y. Konstantinidis E. Remington A. Paukman

YEA

re/program

138

Blend lot-ek + Thomas Demonchaux GSAPP, New York 2013

blend:// to make two opposites the end conditions of the same system. tool:// illustrator. operation:// shift + switch, scale. experiment:// the blend tool in illustrator was used to merge, with a specific number of steps, two different geometries. As the formal results were of particular interest, a period of testing began to assess the logic of the tool itself. Once the logic was understood, the tool was used with greater control to blend two grids: one corresponding to the scale of hotel rooms and one to the scale of commercial spaces on the ground level. The requirements of individual programs were plotted onto a three dimensional graph of darkness/ light, inside/outside, and public/private.

This programmatic graph was then used as a reference for the placement of programs within the vertical blend. Translation:// The two dimensional blended plans were translated into three dimensions in rhino either by lofting each layer to its adjacent layer, or by the extrusion of each level. The resultant three dimensional form was then physically modelled so that the spatial relationships could be understood. The resultant architecture and programmatic relationships were discovered as opposed to predetermined.

139

fig. 99 -The Workings of the Blend Tool

140

lib

lle

light

m ca

dark inside

liv

sto

b ba

siu

tre

outside

private

fig. 100 - Programmatic Relationships

141

public

fig. 101 -Blended Plan (black is private/grey is public)

142

fig. 102 - Private Descending/Public Rising

143

fig. 103 -Conceptual Model of Blend

144

fig. 104 - Conceptual Plans of Blend

145

fig. 105 - Model Views

146

fig. 106 - Interior View of Work Space/Classroom

147

re/novate

150

Prime Produce NY Headquarters Troupe + Slab Architecture New York 2012-present

Prime Produce is a non-for-profit that hosts networking and fundraising events for other non-for-profit do-gooders in the city. This is their first permanent space and will be the home of a new non-forprofit co-working community, as well as a flexible event space. The design strategy is divided into three elements: bones, organs and brains. Bones:// the existing building

infrastructure and character is retained and repaired; incisions are made in the party wall to enable larger gatherings. Organs:// Hybrid furniture pieces activate the space, enabling new modes of collaboration. Brain:// Installation of new electronic systems to increase efficiency and interoperability.

151

DEMOLITION PLAN GENERAL NOTES:

DEMOLITION PLAN LEGEND

ALL WORK SHALL BE DONE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE LOCAL MUNICIPAL CODE AND ALL APPLICABLE GOVERNING AUTHORITIES

THE CONTRACTOR IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE REMOVAL AND DISPOSAL OF ALL ITEMS INDICATED FOR DEMOLITION IN ACCORDANCE WITH LOCAL GUIDELINES AND AS PER BUILDING REGULATIONS.

THE CONTRACTOR SHALL WORK EXISTING CONSTRUCTION ADJAC PREPARE ALL ADJACENT SURFAC AREAS TO PROTECT THE FINISHE

THE CONTRACTOR SHALL REMOVE ALL NON-LOAD BEARING ITEMS AS NOTED. NO DEMOLITION SHALL TAKE PLACE THAT WILL LEAVE THE REMAINING STRUCTURE UNSOUND.

WHEREVER ITEMS ARE TO BE RE CONSTRUCTION SO THAT ALL RE MARKS.

REMOVE ALL ELECTRICAL ITEMS WORK SHALL BE DONE IN ACCOR IN TENANT AGREEMENT.

ALL FIRE ALARM WORK IS TO BE P TEFLON WIRE OCCURRED DURIN FIRE DEVICES IS TO BE REPAIRED

PROTECT EXG. BUILDING ARCHIT RESPONSIBLE TO REPAIR ANY DA NEW CONSTRUCTION.

THE CONTRACTOR SHALL PROTE PROPERLY CONTROL THE REMOV

ALL FIREPROOFING ON STRUCTU DAMAGED DURING DEMOLITION/C CONTRACTOR. FIRE RATING OF W

REPAIR ALL OPENINGS IN COLUM ELECTRICAL, TELEPHONE, OR ME

DEMOLITION PLAN (SEE DEMOLITION PLAN) 1.

REMOVE EXISTING DAMAGED CO STRUCTURAL DRAWINGS. SHORE ACCEPT NEW CONSTRUCTION.

REMOVE PATCHES OF CEILING W PREP AREA AS REQUIRED TO ACC

REMOVE EXISTING DETERIORIATE SIDEWALK PREP AREA AS REQUIR STRUCTURAL DRAWINGS FOR SC

REMOVE EXISTING METAL ROLL D

REMOVE EXISTING STEEL COLUM

15 UP 12 1 11 11

104

6 10

RESTROOM

REMOVE EXISTING UPPER & DRO UNDERSIDE OF EXISTING SECON 2-HR FIRE-RATED CEILING WHERE

REMOVE EXISTING STOREFRONT ACCEPT NEW CONST.

REMOVE ALL EXISTING LIGHT FIX RECEPTACLES FOR NETWORK AN SAVE EXIT SIGNS AND EMERGEN ON THE RCP AND ELECTRICAL DW

GRIND CONCRETE FLOOR SMOOT PATCH AND REPAIR DAMAGE FRO CONCRETE FINISH. COORDINATE

19 22 5

STAIRS

24 12

STAIRS

RESTROOM

10. REMOVE EXISTING PLUMBING FIX NEW CONSTRUCTION.

29 109

11. REMOVE ALL EXISTING WALL PAR REMOVE ELECTRICAL SWITCHES

11 11

25 13

LOBBY

12. REMOVE EXISTING DOORS & FRA DOORS SCHEDULED TO BE SAVE

OFFICE

13. REROUTE OR REMOVE EXISTING CONSTRUCTION AND MEP DRAWI 12

OPEN OFFICE

±59'-3"

±57'-4"

14. REMOVE THE EXG. HVAC EQUIPM THROUGHOUT.

15. DEMOLISH EXISTING MASONRY W INDICATED ON STRUCTURAL DWG LINTELS / BEAMS AND COLUMNS. DRAWINGS. COORDINATE WITH C

105

16. REMOVE AND REPLACE EXISTING FOR SCOPE.

6 18

17. REMOVE CARPETING, PADDING, A AND RESIDUE FROM FLOOR AND CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS.

18. DEMOLISH THE EXG. CONCRETE FOR NEW RAISED SLAB AS REQU

HALLWAY

19. REMOVE ALL CARPET, PADDING & FINISH. COORDINATE WITH CONS

12 12 14

20. REMOVE THE EXG. BUILT-IN WALL

OFFICE

105

21. REMOVE EXG. UNUSED HVAC RO TO ACCEPT NEW HVAC UNITS. RE REPAIR ROOFING AND FLASHING

15 8

22. REMOVE EXG. FLOOR DRAINS AN TO MATCH FLOOR FINISH.

106

23. CLEAN AND REPAIR EXISTING WIN PAINT AND PREP FOR NEW PAINT

OFFICE

24. REMOVE EXISTING SOFFIT AND P

25. REMOVE AND REROUTE STORM W NEW STEEL BEAM. RECONNECT DRAWINGS FOR SCOPE OF WORK

26. REMOVE & REPLACE EXISTING RO

14 23

27. PATCH AND REPAIR ROOFING AT DRAWINGS.

28. REMOVE EXISTING SKYLIGHT CON NEW REPLACEMENT

29. DEMOLISH MASONRY TO ACCOMM DRAWINGS.

30. REMOVE EXG CONCRETE SIDEWA AND CURB.

±24'-2"

±1'-8"

±24'-2"

±50'-0"

fig. 107 - Ground Floor Demolition Plan

152

1ST FLOOR DE

KEYED CONSTRUCTION

1- NEW CONCRETE SLAB TO REPLACE EX TO STRUCT. DWGS FOR SCOPE OF WOR DURING SLAB REPLACEMENT.

A300

2- NEW LARGE OPENING (~31’) IN MASONR NEW STEEL SUPPORT BEAM & COLUMN

3- EXISTING BATHROOM LOCATION. REPL PLUMBING SCHEDULE AND EXTEND EXI WHERE APPLICABLE (WEST SIDE 1ST FL

4- NEW RAISED CONCRETE FLOOR, CONC THE WEST SIDE OF THE BUILDING TO M SIDE OF BUILDING.

31 ±50'-0"

±24'-2 1/2"

5- NEW ADA COMPLIANT BATHROOM. REU

±1'-8"

6- REUSE EXISTING SHOWER DRAIN FOR N PLUMBING TO NEW FLOOR HEIGHT. RE

±24'-1 1/2" 01 9'-11"

±13'-10 1/2"

3'-9"

101 F2 WX

3'-6 1/4"

3 9'-1 3/4"

JANITOR CLOS.

1'-2" EXG

±4'-1 3/4" 12'-10 1/4"

N/A F4 WX

20- PERIMETER RADIATORS EXISTING TO FOR NEW PAINT.

21- NEW EXTERIOR WALL PENETRATIONS INDICATED ON STRUCTURAL DRAWINGS DETAILS

1 1

109 F2 WX TLT

107

22- REPAIR CEILING AT ALL NEW AND EXIS FIRE-RATED CEILING AS PER TYPICAL F

23- INSTALL NEW 2-HR FIRE RATED CEILIN ASSEMBLY FROM 2ND FLOOR OFFICE U A-700.00

01 A600

24- PATCH WITH CONCRETE WHERE FLOO FLOOR.

25- FURR OUT WALL AROUND RELOCATED

A410

26- NEW SKYLIGHT AND CURB AT EXISTIN DRAWINGS FOR SPECIFICATIONS AND W

107 F4 WX

S 1

STAIR 3

A700

BATHROOM 04

19- REPLACE ROOFING, DRAINS & FLASHIN ACCOMMODATE NEW HVAC VERTICAL D ROOFING DETAILS AND MEP DRAWINGS

106

1'-5"

N/A

106 F4 WX

TLT

SIM 09

17'-9"

1'-8"

12'-4 1/2"

7'-0"

27- NEW ROOFTOP MECHANICAL EQUIPME STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING DRAWINGS

3'-10"

A700

28- REPAIR LEAKS IN ROOF MEMBRANE, T

KITCHENETTE

12'-5"

01 A601

30- REPAIR AND FILL ALL VOIDS AROUND EVENT SPACE

17 12

16 1

16 F4

07 A700

31- NEW CONCRETE SIDEWALK AND CURB COLOR TBD BY ARCHITECT.

102 F2/F4 WX

REF

29- REMOVE & REPLACE EXISTING ROOF D

108 F2 WX

32- EXG COLUMNS AND BEAMS TO BE WR TO DETAILS ON A-700.00

±32'-1 1/4"

FACADE NOTES

F-1. TIE BACK BULGING BRICKS AS NECE FACADE

F-2.

09 TYP T.O. RAISED CONC. SLAB 7'-9 1/2"

REPAIR SURFACE COATING ON WES

F-3. REPAIR AND/OR REPLACE BULGING TO PARAPET, WEST CORNER OF NORTH

A700 T.O. EXIST. CONC. SLAB

ELEV. ±1'-5"

32 2

SIM 08

A700

±23'-7 1/4"

11"

2'-4"

±57'-4"

109

8 3/4"

HALLWAY

18- REINSTALL EXISTING FIRST FLOOR SL TO THE WEST SIDE OF THE NEW OPENI

3'-2 1/2" EXG

4 RAMP 1

105 F4 WX

16- REPAIR CEILING JOIST FRAMING INCLU DETERIORATED JOISTS ON THE EAST B STRUCTURAL SURVEY REPORT BY FMO

17- EXISTING CONCRETE SLAB TO REMAIN SCHEDULE.

2'-10 1/2"

BATHROOM 03

4'-5 3/4"

2'-2 1/4" 110

TLT

ADA BATHROOM 4'-10 3/4"

5'-10 1/4"

2'-5 3/4"

104 F2 WX

105

BATHROOM 02

±59'-3"

01 A500

3'-5" EXG

15- PREP EXISTING OPENING AS REQ'D. TO

103 F2 WX

±25'-0 3/4"

2'-6"

14- NEW HARDWOOD FLOORING THROUG REPAIR EXISTING SUBFLOOR AS REQ'D

3'-4" EXG

TLT

BATHROOM 01

2'-6 1/2" 23'-3"

ELEV. +0'-0"

104

2'-6"

EXIST.

±17'-7 1/2"

T.O. CONC. SLAB

13- NEW STEEL LINTEL AT NEW MASONRY INSTALLATION DETAILS AND SPECS.

ELEV. ±1'-5" 100 F3 WX

12- NEW THEATRICAL PIPE GRID (ROUGHL INSTALLED ON CEILING AT SOUTH SIDE

3'-8 3/4"

T.O. EXG. CONC. SLAB

11- NEW STAIRS AT LINTEL OPENING. REF CONSTRUCTION DETAILS.

103

4'-4"

ALIGN

MEETING AREA

TLT

4'-0"

1'-11 1/2"

N/A F6 WX

RECEPTION

±3'-0" EXG

STAIR 1

±1'-8 3/4"

3 ALIGN

N/A F3 WX

9- NEW ENTRY DOOR AND NEW GARAGE D

10- EXISTING WINDOWS AND DOORS TO R THOROUGHLY CLEAN, PREP FOR NEW P SCHEDULE FOR HARDWARE REPLACEM

1'-2"

VIF

8- NEW BATHROOM WITH TOILET & LAVAT FINISH / PLUMBING SCHEDULE.

101 102

ALIGN

±3'-0" STAIR 2

7- NEW KITCHENETTE WITH SINK & DISHW SCOPE OF MILLWORK.

A300

6'-0"

111 1'-3"

±2'-2"

100

8'-0"

10 1'-6"

3'-1"

EXG HATCH

±1'-1 1/4"

9 1/2"

HOLD

1'-11 1/2"

3'-4"

11 1/2"

1'-6"

1'-0 1/2"

104

F-2 2'-5 3/4"

2'-10"

103 2'-8"

102

2'-10"

4'-9 1/2"

2'-10"

101 2'-8"

2'-10"

1'-9 1/2"

F-1 ±50'-0"

fig. 108 - Ground Floor Construction Plan

153

1ST FLOOR CONS

DEMOLITION PLAN GENERAL NOTES:

DEMOLITION PLAN LEGEND

ALL WORK SHALL BE DONE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE LOCAL MUNICIPAL CODE AND ALL APPLICABLE GOVERNING AUTHORITIES THE CONTRACTOR IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE REMOVAL AND DISPOSAL OF ALL ITEMS INDICATED FOR DEMOLITION IN ACCORDANCE WITH LOCAL GUIDELINES AND AS PER BUILDING REGULATIONS.

THE CONTRACTOR SHALL REMOVE ALL NON-LOAD BEARING ITEMS AS NOTED. NO DEMOLITION SHALL TAKE PLACE THAT WILL LEAVE THE REMAINING STRUCTURE UNSOUND.

WHEREVER ITEMS ARE TO BE REMOV CONSTRUCTION SO THAT ALL REMAIN MARKS.

REMOVE ALL ELECTRICAL ITEMS FRO WORK SHALL BE DONE IN ACCORDAN IN TENANT AGREEMENT.

±50'-0" ±24'-11"

THE CONTRACTOR SHALL WORK WITH EXISTING CONSTRUCTION ADJACENT PREPARE ALL ADJACENT SURFACES A AREAS TO PROTECT THE FINISHES OF

A. B.

±23'-9"

±1'-4"

ALL FIRE ALARM WORK IS TO BE PERF TEFLON WIRE OCCURRED DURING RE FIRE DEVICES IS TO BE REPAIRED BY

PROTECT EXG. BUILDING ARCHITECTU RESPONSIBLE TO REPAIR ANY DAMAG NEW CONSTRUCTION.

THE CONTRACTOR SHALL PROTECT A PROPERLY CONTROL THE REMOVAL O

ALL FIREPROOFING ON STRUCTURAL DAMAGED DURING DEMOLITION/CONS CONTRACTOR. FIRE RATING OF WALL

REPAIR ALL OPENINGS IN COLUMN EN ELECTRICAL, TELEPHONE, OR MECHA

DEMOLITION PLAN KE 23

(SEE DEMOLITION PLAN)

REMOVE EXISTING DAMAGED CONCR STRUCTURAL DRAWINGS. SHORE EXI ACCEPT NEW CONSTRUCTION.

REMOVE PATCHES OF CEILING WHER PREP AREA AS REQUIRED TO ACCEPT

REMOVE EXISTING DETERIORIATED S SIDEWALK PREP AREA AS REQUIRED STRUCTURAL DRAWINGS FOR SCOPE

REMOVE EXISTING METAL ROLL DOOR

REMOVE EXISTING STEEL COLUMN AN

REMOVE EXISTING UPPER & DROP CE UNDERSIDE OF EXISTING SECOND FLO 2-HR FIRE-RATED CEILING WHERE RE

REMOVE EXISTING STOREFRONT SYS ACCEPT NEW CONST.

REMOVE ALL EXISTING LIGHT FIXTURE RECEPTACLES FOR NETWORK AND EL SAVE EXIT SIGNS AND EMERGENCY LI ON THE RCP AND ELECTRICAL DWGS.

GRIND CONCRETE FLOOR SMOOTH TO PATCH AND REPAIR DAMAGE FROM TH CONCRETE FINISH. COORDINATE WIT

20 OFFICE

OFFICE

12 OPEN OFFICE

10 210

209

STORAGE

12 11

RESTROOM

10 OFFICE

RESTROOM

208

10. REMOVE EXISTING PLUMBING FIXTUR NEW CONSTRUCTION. HALLWAY

RESTROOM

±57'-4"

12 12 11 6

12. REMOVE EXISTING DOORS & FRAMES DOORS SCHEDULED TO BE SAVED AN

13. REROUTE OR REMOVE EXISTING DUC CONSTRUCTION AND MEP DRAWINGS

14. REMOVE THE EXG. HVAC EQUIPMENT THROUGHOUT.

17 15

OPEN OFFICE

6 DN

11. REMOVE ALL EXISTING WALL PARTITIO REMOVE ELECTRICAL SWITCHES AND

DN STAIRS

±59'-3"

15. DEMOLISH EXISTING MASONRY WALL INDICATED ON STRUCTURAL DWGS. A LINTELS / BEAMS AND COLUMNS. REL DRAWINGS. COORDINATE WITH CONS

16. REMOVE AND REPLACE EXISTING ELE FOR SCOPE.

STAIRS

17. REMOVE CARPETING, PADDING, AND N AND RESIDUE FROM FLOOR AND PRE CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS.

28 12

18. DEMOLISH THE EXG. CONCRETE SLAB FOR NEW RAISED SLAB AS REQUIRED

STORAGE

19. REMOVE ALL CARPET, PADDING & GLU FINISH. COORDINATE WITH CONSTRU 11

20. REMOVE THE EXG. BUILT-IN WALL FUR

OFFICE

21. REMOVE EXG. UNUSED HVAC ROOFTO TO ACCEPT NEW HVAC UNITS. REFER REPAIR ROOFING AND FLASHING AS R

OFFICE

22. REMOVE EXG. FLOOR DRAINS AND CA TO MATCH FLOOR FINISH.

12 11

23. CLEAN AND REPAIR EXISTING WINDOW PAINT AND PREP FOR NEW PAINT FINI OFFICE

24. REMOVE EXISTING SOFFIT AND PREP

25. REMOVE AND REROUTE STORM WATE NEW STEEL BEAM. RECONNECT TO E DRAWINGS FOR SCOPE OF WORK

26. REMOVE & REPLACE EXISTING ROOF D 23

27. PATCH AND REPAIR ROOFING AT NEW DRAWINGS.

28. REMOVE EXISTING SKYLIGHT CONSTR NEW REPLACEMENT

29. DEMOLISH MASONRY TO ACCOMMODA DRAWINGS.

30. REMOVE EXG CONCRETE SIDEWALK, C AND CURB.

fig. 109 - Second Floor Demolition Plan

154

2ND FLOOR DE

KEYED CONSTRUCTION

1- NEW CONCRETE SLAB TO REPLACE EX TO STRUCT. DWGS FOR SCOPE OF WOR DURING SLAB REPLACEMENT.

2- NEW LARGE OPENING (~31’) IN MASONR NEW STEEL SUPPORT BEAM & COLUMN

3- EXISTING BATHROOM LOCATION. REPL PLUMBING SCHEDULE AND EXTEND EXI WHERE APPLICABLE (WEST SIDE 1ST FL

4- NEW RAISED CONCRETE FLOOR, CONC THE WEST SIDE OF THE BUILDING TO M SIDE OF BUILDING.

5- NEW ADA COMPLIANT BATHROOM. REU

±49'-11 3/4"

±11'-4 3/4"

1'-6"

5'-9 1/4"

2'-6"

1'-3"

6- REUSE EXISTING SHOWER DRAIN FOR PLUMBING TO NEW FLOOR HEIGHT. RE

2'-2 1/4"

3'-7 1/2"

4'-10 3/4"

3'-7 1/2"

5'-7"

2'-9"

±3'-8 1/4"

7- NEW KITCHENETTE WITH SINK & DISHW SCOPE OF MILLWORK.

8- NEW BATHROOM WITH TOILET & LAVAT FINISH / PLUMBING SCHEDULE.

UP 202

202

203

2'-8 1/4"

8'-11 3/4"

9- NEW ENTRY DOOR AND NEW GARAGE D

204

10- EXISTING WINDOWS AND DOORS TO R THOROUGHLY CLEAN, PREP FOR NEW P SCHEDULE FOR HARDWARE REPLACEM

11- NEW STAIRS AT LINTEL OPENING. REF CONSTRUCTION DETAILS.

12'-11 1/2"

20 CONF RM 01

CONF RM 02 202 F7 WX

201 F7 WX

12- NEW THEATRICAL PIPE GRID (ROUGHL INSTALLED ON CEILING AT SOUTH SIDE

±9'-7 1/2"

203

1'-2"

201

ALIGN

13- NEW STEEL LINTEL AT NEW MASONRY INSTALLATION DETAILS AND SPECS.

F-2

14- NEW HARDWOOD FLOORING THROUG REPAIR EXISTING SUBFLOOR AS REQ'D

16'-8"

ALIGN 1

209

210

5'-9"

3'-0"

1'-11"

±7'-10"

15- PREP EXISTING OPENING AS REQ'D. TO

10"

203 F7 WX

211 27'-10" 2'-6 1/4"

18- REINSTALL EXISTING FIRST FLOOR SL TO THE WEST SIDE OF THE NEW OPENI

CLOSET 02

208 F7 WX

205 F7 WX

208

205

TLT

STAIR2 N/A F1 WX

22- REPAIR CEILING AT ALL NEW AND EXIS FIRE-RATED CEILING AS PER TYPICAL F

207 F2 WX

206

15 7'-0"

A410

24- PATCH WITH CONCRETE WHERE FLOO FLOOR.

25- FURR OUT WALL AROUND RELOCATED

26- NEW SKYLIGHT AND CURB AT EXISTIN DRAWINGS FOR SPECIFICATIONS AND W

3'-0"

A500

27- NEW ROOFTOP MECHANICAL EQUIPME STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING DRAWINGS

7'-9 3/4"

28- REPAIR LEAKS IN ROOF MEMBRANE, T

29- REMOVE & REPLACE EXISTING ROOF D

MEETING ROOM

4'-8 3/4"

EXG

23- INSTALL NEW 2-HR FIRE RATED CEILIN ASSEMBLY FROM 2ND FLOOR OFFICE U A-700.00

212

14 DN 5'-8 3/4"

STAIR 2 N/A F6 WX

±3'-4 1/4"

3'-1"

21- NEW EXTERIOR WALL PENETRATIONS INDICATED ON STRUCTURAL DRAWINGS DETAILS

BATHROOM 02

59'-2 3/4"

11'-2 1/2"

201

200

20- PERIMETER RADIATORS EXISTING TO FOR NEW PAINT.

204 F7 WX

A602 19'-8 1/4"

55'-5 1/2"

A602

EXG HATCH

206 F2 WX

207

19- REPLACE ROOFING, DRAINS & FLASHIN ACCOMMODATE NEW HVAC VERTICAL D ROOFING DETAILS AND MEP DRAWINGS

±3'-6 3/4"

HALL

7'-0"

BATHROOM 01 5'-11 1/2"

209 F2 WX

17- EXISTING CONCRETE SLAB TO REMAIN SCHEDULE.

OPEN OFFICE

BATHROOM 03 TLT

16- REPAIR CEILING JOIST FRAMING INCLU DETERIORATED JOISTS ON THE EAST B STRUCTURAL SURVEY REPORT BY FMO

CLOSET 01

200 F7 WX

30- REPAIR AND FILL ALL VOIDS AROUND

31- NEW CONCRETE SIDEWALK AND CURB COLOR TBD BY ARCHITECT.

32- EXG COLUMNS AND BEAMS TO BE WR TO DETAILS ON A-700.00 FACADE NOTES

F-2.

REPAIR SURFACE COATING ON WES

F-3. REPAIR AND/OR REPLACE BULGING TO PARAPET, WEST CORNER OF NORTH

20 205

VTR

10 1'-0"

F-1. TIE BACK BULGING BRICKS AS NECE FACADE

±22'-6 1/4"

15'-7"

±18'-10 1/4"

F-2

206 2'-5 1/4"

207 7'-7"

F-1

±4'-9 1/2"

7'-6"

2'-7 3/4"

±24'-11 3/4"

±25'-0"

±49'-11 3/4"

fig. 110- Second Floor Construction Plan

155

2ND FLOOR CONS

424 W 54TH

426 W 54TH

ELEVATION KEYNO

101

7'-7 3/4"

NORTH ELEVATION SCALE: 1/4" = 1'-0"

9 1/4"

102

10'-6 3/4"

(SEE CONSTRUCTION PLANS AND ELEVATIONS)

1'-0 1/2" 50'-0"

ENLARGED PLAN AT ENTRY SCALE: 1/4" = 1'-0"

fig. 111 -Proposed Elevation

156

NEW STOREFRONT ENTRY DOO SPECIFICATION.

SCOPE OF EXT. FAÇADE RESTO ARCHITECT. SCOPE TO INCLU IN AREAS CRITICALLY DAMAGE AND IN AREAS WHERE PREVIO REMOVED. IN GENERAL, ALL M MORTAR AS SPEC'D. SELECTIV BULGING, CRACKING, AND OTH EFFLORESCENCE EXIST. ALL A AND PROJECTIONS SCHEDULE AS REQ'D.

REPAIR MASONRY STUCCO AT PROVIDE NEW FINAL STUCCO COLOR.

NEW CONCRETE SIDEWALK TO BY ARCHITECT. REFER TO BPP HATCH TO REMAIN.

NEW EXT. LIGHT FIXTURES AS

EXG FIRE ESCAPE TO REMAIN,

fig. 112 - gf: event space/cafe/reception/hot-desking area 1st fl. - designated work space/classroom/conference rooms

157

fig. 113 -Interior View of Cafe/Lounge

158

fig. 114/115 -Interior View of Work Space/Classroom

159

re/write

The Universal and the Spiritual in the Work and Thought of Theo Van Doesburg Professor Kenneth Frampton Architectural History II GSAPP, New York 2011

164

The Universal and the Spiritual in the Work and Thought of Theo Van Doesburg Professor Kenneth Frampton Architectural History II GSAPP, New York 2011

In the thirteenth series of De Stijl, published in 1926, Theo Van Doesburg defines the spirit as “man’s capacity to think and thus to distinguish himself from animals; the superior quality of any substance, of which the soul is the essence.”1 In the context of destruction and disorder that characterized the age of the first mechanized war, the desire for a universal language was seen as part of a wider ‘utopian vision of an international movement to purify and liberate man from inaccuracy, obscurity, and sentimentality so that his innate creativity could be developed and expressed.”2 // In Visions of Totality, Steven Mansbach argues that Van Doesburg, in his search for the

conceptual foundations of a universal language, rejected the mystical and theosophical underpinnings that were fundamental to the new spiritual order as expressed through the work of Kandinksy and Mondrian. “By abjuring transcendentalist and individualistic approaches to art, Moholy-Nagy, Van Doesburg, and Lissitsky attempted to make abstract art universally comprehensible. Moreover, they were concerned with the “real” world and not with an ideated realm of the free spirt. They were committed to improving man’s life in the present while working for his perfection in the future. By employing the techniques and tools of modern science

165

and industry, they sought to affirm a nontranscendent vision of society.”3 // This paper opposes the aforementioned view established by Mansbach, and in doing so, postulates that the ideological theories of Kandinksy and Mondrian, which in turn were based on the principles of Theosophy and the work and philosophy of both M. H. J. Schoenmakers and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, were in fact paralleled by the work and thought of Theo Van Doesburg. In an attempt to do so, the influence of the universal and the spiritual, on the work and thought of Theo Van Doesburg will be explored through his paintings and architectural interventions, as well as the writings published in both De Stijl and Eenheid. Emphasis will be placed on the exploration of his later work, and in particular on his theories of Counter-Composition and the formation of Elementarism and Art Concret. The Mechanization Of Society: (Creative) Destruction And The Formative Years Of De Stijl: // The evolution of modernism within the creative realms of art and architecture cannot be divorced from the context of destruction that characterized the time period of the first mechanized war. Operating in this context, the leading architects and artists of the modern movement sought to reinforce the unifying and ordering potential of the plastic arts, envisioning the future of civilization through the lens of creative production and the idea of the universal which was omni-present in manifestos of the time. As Mansbach outlines, “the optimistic belief in an ideal realm was the product of the utopian fervor that affected many intellectuals in the early decades of this century, and especially in the ten years following the outbreak of the First World War. During this period, transcendental metaphysics, mystical speculation, and

visionary social theories were embraced by many artists as meaningful alternatives to a European cultural order that was perceived as spiritually, politically, and aesthetically desiccated.”4 // The social malaise that spread during the period of the First World War, cleared the way for what many artists believed to be a new era, where the truly modern, universal outlook would eventually prevail.5 Artistic production would transcend the purpose of individual expression, instead becoming a mechanism for social change. The aspiration towards collaboration was already present within the realm of the fine and applied arts at the turn of the century, visible through the work and thought of the Deutsche Werkbund, (leading to the formation of the Bauhaus), as well as the Dutch art and architecture movement. In the burgeoning spirit of collaboration that characterized this time period art was no longer to be conceived in terms of the isolated object, but rather “in relationship to the larger social, philosophical and environmental whole. In a common spirit of renewal, workers in diverse fields would join in transforming the incoherent surroundings of the day into a setting unified by a pure and universal style.”6 // The mechanization of the first world war was indicative of a wider technological and social evolution that had been transforming the European socio-political, as well as cultural landscape of the early 20th century. The proliferation of mass production and standardization was seen as an opportunity for the propagation of a universal language, as well as a means of achieving an individual-universal equilibrium. // First published in October of 1917, the exploration and definition of this universal language, as well as the eradication of the individual that dominated the social

166

foundations of the European context, was the principle raison d’être of De Stijl. Thus, the manifesto, as written by Van Doesburg in 1918 firmly stated: “There is an old and there is a new consciousness…The old centers on the individual…The new centers on the universal…The struggle between individual and universal is manifested in the world war, as well as in contemporary art… The war is destroying the old world and its content: domination by the individual in every area…The new art has asserted the content of the new consciousness: individual-universal equilibrium…The new consciousness is ready to be realized in every area, including material life…This realization is obstructed by tradition, dogma, and domination by the individual (the natural)…Therefore the founders of the new art call on all who believe in the renewal of art and culture to annihilate these obstacles--just as in the new art, by abolishing naturalistic form, they annihilated whatever obstructs pure aesthetic expression, the ultimate consequence of all art.” 7 // The new age was defined similarly by an enthusiasm for science and technology which captivated Western and Russian intellectuals in the post-War years and transformed the 1920’s into the “first machine age.”8 As depicted in Mondrian’s Natural Reality and Abstract Reality, the machine could now liberate man, allowing him to concentrate inward, towards the universal and essential: “The new man must indeed be entirely ‘different’ from the old … He … uses his physical being as a perfect machine … without himself becoming a machine. The difference lies precisely in this: formerly man was himself a machine; now he uses the machine, whether his own body or a machine of his own making. To the latter, he leaves so far as possible the heavy work, himself concentrating on the inward … I posit this new man as a ‘type’ that is as yet

only partially realized … but it is beginning to appear!”9 // With the abolition of all conventional boundaries, this new ‘type’ of man could actualize his innate creativity, that is “art could enable him to become more fully human by giving direction and form to his creative potential.”10 In line with Mondrian, Van Doesburg sought to place art at the center of man’s life: “They [Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, van Doesburg] articulated a new conception of and responsibility for art. Through art they worked to achieve a universal, harmonious, and creative integration: man with the cosmos, man with man, and man with his potential.”11 This demanded an even greater need for the establishment of a universal language, no longer focused on the expression of the natural (individual), but on the universal (abstract). // As aforementioned, the emergence of the universal (abstract) as a means of expression was directly linked to the spirit of scientific and technological progress that characterized the early decades of the 20th century. Moreover, the search for new social ordering systems, alongside the utopian fervor that spread amongst Europe’s intellectuals at the time, prepared the ground for a widespread fascination of the occult, and in particular, of Theosophy and NeoPlatonism. The work of M. H. J. Schoenmaekers, a leading Dutch theosophist of the time, was particularly instrumental in providing Mondrian’s theory on Neoplasticism with an objective, philosophical background.12 “There is little doubt that Schoenmaekers saw in Mondrian’s works of that period, which consisted of linear, horizontal-vertical constructive compositions and reduced colour to gradations of the three primaries, the visualization of his ideas as presented in his own books Het nieuve Wereldbeeld (The New Image of the World) (1915) and Beginselen der beeldende Wiskunde

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(Principles of Plastic Mathematics) (1916).”13 // During the formative years of De Stijl, and in particular of Mondrian’s Neo-plastic theory, Van Doesburg was likewise searching for expressions of universal intelligibility in both the theory and practice of art. In Visions of Totality, Steven Mansbach argues that Van Doesburg, in his search for the conceptual foundations of a universal language, rejected the mystical and theosophical underpinnings that were fundamental to the new spiritual order as expressed through the work of Kandinksy and Mondrian. It cannot be denied that Van Doesburg demonstrated much less affinity to Schoenmaekers than Mondrian during this time period. Over the course of his career, however, Van Doesburg would not only return to Schoenmaeker’s predication of art to be “the final, concrete manifestation of universal thought,”14 but fully embraced the arithmetical approach of Schoenmaekers (similarly prevalent in Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art) in his theories of Counter-Composition and the formation of Elementarism and Art Concret: “because mathematical shapes were universally recognizable, they could be understood in their own terms instead of being interpreted in light of a literary text, historical event, or personal experience. Mathematically-related formal elements might serve perfectly as the elemental signs of a universal language. As irreducible shapes they could fusion as a visual Ursprache, uncorrupted by tradition. And as purified forms, mathematically-derived shapes could operate as the purest expression of man’s innate creativity.”15 // Neoplatonic Thought; Van Doesburg’s Ideoplasticism:// Alongside the trend towards Theosophy and the occult that characterized the early decades of the twentieth century, was an increased interest in Plato’s theory of mathematical objects, as can be seen in Gottleb Frege’s philosophy of

mathematics, as well as in the work of Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung and G.W.F. Hegel, to name a few. A renewed interest in Greek philosophy was not contained within the world of philosophy, however, gaining precedence in the domain of the arts and particularly influential to modern architectural thought was Plato’s distinction between the ‘universal and the individual, reality and appearance, being and becoming’. // In Richard Padovan’s Toward’s Universality: Le Corbusier, Mies and De Stijl, the connection between Neoplatonic thought, Hegelian philosophy and the early phases of Van Doesburg’s Ideoplasticism is concisely elucidated: “Van Doesburg’s elevation of the beeldend art that represents the universal, abstract reality above the sort of art that either mimics appearances directly or is derived from them through distortion seems to fit Plato’s distinction between the realm of eternal Forms and that of shifting phenomena, and Hegel’s between the ‘conceptive or imaginative consciousness’ and the ‘free thought of absolute Spirit’. Or does it?”16 // In Principles of Neoplastic Art, published in 1925, Van Doesburg expressed that the purpose of art was to “give form the fundamental essence through artistic means and nothing else”17 However, it can be argued, as it has by both Padovan and Doig, that the process of ‘simplification’ inherent to his theory of Ideoplasticism was nothing more than an abstract reconstruction of natural objects, and as can be seen in his process of transforming a cow, did little to re-embody the essence of the object in a new way, “he envisages a process by which, not the appearance of this or that particular cow at this or that moment, but the universal Form or platonic Idea of the cow, the cowness of all cows, can be represented in two dimensions on canvas.”17 // During the period 1918-1925, Van Doesburg’s methodology in extracting the ‘essence’ and

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the universal in his work moved away from the abstraction of natural objects towards composing by means of pure proportion and mathematics. It must be said, however, that this transition did not happen immediately and even though paintings such as Rhythm of a Russian dance, Tarantella, and Rag-time look like pure geometrical constructions, the studies that were created prior to the paintings all indicate a starting point of more or less natural depictions of dancers.18 According to Padovan, the true transition from ‘ideoplasticism’ to the direct ‘representation of pure thought’ was made only later in his career by way of architecture, best articulated through his concept of Elementarism. Elementarism; The ‘Spiritual Force’ Of The Oblique:// The search for the elemental would continue to occupy the work and thought of Van Doesburg, ultimately leading to his theory of Elementarism in 1924. This phase in his work is best characterized by his CounterCompositions, (that would be followed by his Counter-Constructions) and the exploration of the oblique, in both his art and in his architectural representations. The oblique was intended as an “illustration of an inner, dynamic dimension, namely that of the spirit, in contrast to the static, horizontalvertical structure of external (physical) nature.”19 Scientific concepts of matter in motion, and chiefly Einstein’s theory of Relativity, alongside the exploration of the law of gravity in painting, would continue to play a key role in clarifying what in fact was the essence of the universal, and in this light, both motion and energy were to gain extreme relevance in the work of Van Doesburg. // The idea of movement and energy, had been present in his work since his earlier exchanges with Marinetti and the Italian Futurists and according to Van Doesburg, “provided art, on the one hand, with a means to achieve objectivity and universality by

corresponding with objective, universal forces; and on the other hand, with a model for a future realm of dynamic relationships”.20 In Elementarism and it’s Origins, he states: “…This oblique dimension not only nullifies ancient modes of orthogonal expression (in music, architecture, painting, sculpture, dance and so forth) but simultaneously creates a new system of optics and phonetics. These elementary renovations find their equivalent in the theory of relativity, in the new research on the nature of matter and in a fresh attitude towards the unlimited intelligence and creative initiative of human beings…The Elementarist seeks to unify in a new method of expression the two main factors in creative activity, which is to say, rest and movement or space and time. The Elementarist acknowledges time as an important value in the plastic work of art; in this manner he has presented film, music, drama, sculpture and architecture with new possibilities. This provides a universal method both for art and for industrial production.”21 // Therefore, in the oblique, Van Doesburg found the expression of not only movement and energy, but of the fourth dimension of time. This ‘moto-stereometric’ form of expression represented the ‘spirit’ or ‘essence’ for Van Doesburg, and with the desire to break away from the natural (individual) expression found in the orthogonal, ultimately led to the schism between him and Mondrian: “Mondrian would continue to secure the annulment of conflict between the two poles through the equilibrium of horizontal and vertical elements, whereas Van Doesburg would try to achieve the same end through the combination of the spiritual (the oblique) with the physical or natural (the horizontalvertical) element by means of contrast.”22 Contributing to their separation were their divergent beliefs regarding the application of the ‘elemental’ and the ‘oblique’, or the

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destruction of the vertical/horizontal domination of the natural, within the realm of architectural production, as well as Mondrian’s affinity towards the Dutch Wendingen group, that favored an Expressionist type of architecture to which De Stijl had always been opposed. // Dynamic Architecture; Van Doesburg’s Counter-Constructions:// Critical to the founding principles of De Stijl, as outlined by Van Doesburg in 1917, was the conviction that architecture could transcend its material and technical means in order to achieve a totally unified artistic result. Beyond the desire for the Gesamtkunstwerk, endemic to the northern European artistic theory of the time, in it’s potential to express the universal and the spiritual, “artists accepted architecture as the truly social art, as an aesthetic discipline with consummate social and moral responsibility. By addressing man’s physical and aesthetic needs, architecture could and should alter man’s living conditions and make it possible for him to achieve biological integration.”23 The elimination of the natural (individual) within the realm of architecture was directly related to Van Doesburg’s opposition of the orthogonal in painting. In an attempt to eliminate the duality between the individual (natural) and the universal (abstract), the concept of Counter-Construction, very much influenced by Mondrian’s earlier ideas of creative destruction, aimed to expand into the realm of architecture, ultimately destroying all existing boundaries that separated man from man, man from nature, and man from his true self. // These ideas were first expressed in the axonometric models and drawings produced by Van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren at the Effort Moderne exhibition in Paris in October 1923. In an attempt to break away from the natural forces that, for Van Doesburg, represented the ‘static world order of the old

culture,’ solids were replaced by a language of floating planes. Best demonstrated in the drawings for the Maison Particuliere, colours were combined with the ‘non-colours’ of white, grey and black, to further break traditional separations between floor and ceiling, inside and outside, etc. Moreover, the role of painting was elevated beyond the decorative, instead it contributed towards a new ‘spatial dynamism’. In The New Architecture and its Consequences, Van Doesburg advocates this concept of new spatial dynamism within architecture, stating that: “…modern architecture was to be dynamic both socially and historically. The organization of colored planes in an open relationship with space, experienced by the active spectator, would make the building a design in space-time. The architect would organize the structural components of the building into a unity “which expresses a maximum of energy.” But the expression of energy was to represent more than the successful creation of dynamic architectural space. It was to be a material manifestation of the symbolic dynamism and energy of modern life, anticipating the new world of the fully integrated society. In addition, by refining man’s aesthetic, physical, and spiritual perception of three dimensional space, contemporary architecture could hasten man’s progress toward future perfection. The new architecture could prepare man for the full expression of all our physicospiritual demands, or, in short, the full expression of our life.”24 // Moreover, the idea of a fully integrated society, expressed through a full integration of the arts and a softening of conventional boundaries, was best explored in Van Doesburg’s contribution to the redevelopment of the Aubette building in 1926. Here, Van Doesburg designed every element down to the tables and ashtrays; ‘the point is to situate man within painting,

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rather than in front of it’, van Doesburg argued. It must be noted, however, that although the drawings of the Maison Particuliere and the Aubette building used axonometric projection as a means of expressing the oblique (spiritual), the proposed architectural space remained orthogonal in nature. This paradox is symptomatic of the transition from NeoPlasticism to Elementarism, since both techniques, orthogonality and obliquity, are now referred to by one and the same term, ‘counter-construction’.25 Furthermore, when looking in further detail at the work produced by both Van Doesburg and Mondrian during this period, their differences are hard to distinguish, as both artists explored the oblique in their compositions. Where then was the difference? // As aforementioned, Mondrian’s concept of Neo-Plasticism was very much influenced in turn by the work of both Schoenmaekers and Hegel. In his exploration of the duality present in the orthogonal and its relationship to the oblique, Mondrian’s view related to the idea of perfect balance and the union of spirit and matter as expressed in Schoenmaekers’ Principles of Plastic Mathematics. Moreover, his idea was equally based on the Hegelian ‘the something being determined by the other’. On the other hand, Van Doesburg’s interpretation was based on the substitution of ‘the something’ for ‘the other’, i.e. of the individual for the universal (spiritual). In order to determine whether Mansbach’s postulation that Van Doesburg, in his search for the conceptual foundations of a universal language, rejected the mystical and theosophical underpinnings that were fundamental to the new spiritual order as expressed through the work of Kandinksy and Mondrian, the influence of the work of Schoenmaekers and Hegel on the formation of both Elementarism, and later Art Concret, will be further explored. // Hegel: Art,

Religion, Philosophy; Van Doesburg’s Three Phases Of Thought:// As previously discussed, fundamental to the formation of a universal language was the idea that art could provide a new unity of purpose for the man, elevating the individual towards the universal, as a means of achieving a new social order. In his important essay ‘Think - Observe - Represent’ (1918) Van Doesburg distinguishes three levels of thought and three corresponding phases of art: “1. Concrete thought - thought about sensory observation; this is reflected in ‘physioplastic’ or naturalistic art, from the palaeolithic era to the present; 2. Deformative thought - an intermediate stage, still derived from observation, but in which this is recast by conceptualization; this appears in ‘ideoplastic’ art, from the neolithic era up to Van Gogh; 3. Finally there is pure abstract thought - thought about thought, in which ‘no representation (voorstelling) of phenomena is involved’, these being replaced by ‘exact mathematical figures’ and ‘number, measure, proportion and abstract line’. This kind of thought is manifested in two modes: rationally, in ‘Chinese, Greek and German philosophy’, and aesthetically, in ‘the new representation [nieuwe beelding] of our time’.”26 // Van Doesburg’s three levels of thought were directly related to the three categories of thought as defined by Hegel in his Philosophy of History, where the ‘exact mathematical figures’ of Van Doesburg are directly related to the free thought of absolute Spirit: “the differences which are perceptible in these modes of presentment are due to the notion of the absolute Spirit (Mind) itself. Spirit, in its truth, is essential substance brought home to itself. It is, therefore, no essence which lies outside and in abstract relation to objectivity, but rather is, within the compass of that objectivity, the re-recollected presence of the substance of all objects within finite spirit. It

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is the finite which grasps its own essential universality, and, in doing so, grasps essential Being in the absolute sense.”27 According to Hegel, the evolution of human thought would lead from Art, to Religion and finally to Philosophy, where the Spirit could then be liberated. // During the formative years of De Stijl, both Mondrian and Van Doesburg agreed with the Hegelian evolution of history, where art would in fact become obsolete once the universal was achieved: “When the universal dominates, life will be so permeated by universality that art, which will be so unreal compared to such a life, will decay, and a new life will take its place, a life which actually realized the universal.”28 Yet, in their more realistic and grounded endeavours to express the spiritual through their art, both Mondrian and Van Doesburg ultimately moved closer to Schoenmaeker’s theory of philosophy finding its deepest, ultimate manifestation in plastic visualization (as opposed to the Hegelian view of philosophy beginning when art ends). // Conclusion; A Reflection On The Universal And Spiritual and its influence on the work and thought of Theo Van Doesburg:// Ultimately, with the development of Elementarism, and finally through his final theory of Art Concret, Van Doesburg once again shared the same philosophical approach towards achieving the universal: “thus, Van Doesburg argued in ‘Painting and Plastic Art’ that religion and philosophy represent obsolete forms that now have been replaced by the art of Elementarism. In fact, by fusing the abstract (spirit) with the visual (painting as a senseobject) in a kind of ‘visual philosophy’, he was moving away from Hegel and coming closer to Schoenmaekers’ Principles of Plastic Mathematics. Schoenmakers held the anti-Hegelian view that thought (the spiritual) would find its deepest and most meaningful manifestation by visualization.”29

// To conclude, fundamental to the philosophy of the De Stijl movement was the aspiration to end the division between Art and life, and thus to find a spirit of the age based on the harmony of the collective as opposed to the domination of the individual, or the arbitrary. “The artists of today, all over the world, impelled by one and the same consciousness, have taken part on the spiritual plane in the world war against the domination of individualism, of arbitrariness. They therefore sympathize with all who are fighting spiritually or materially for the formation of an international unity in life, art and culture.”31 Both Van Doesburg and Mondrian’s work sought to lead an aesthetic evolution, where the union found in their paintings could ultimately be expressed in the union between the individual and the universal; culminating in a new social order. The social and political deterioration on a global scale that led to the second world war hindered the possibility of ever achieving universal harmony as had been aspired by both artists. However, the long lasting influence, of the De Stijl ideals, on the evolution of modern architecture and art cannot be denied, and still today resonate in a world lacking spiritual unity. Notes:// 1. Baljeu, 156 // 2. Mansbach, 6. // 3. Ibid, 9. 4. Ibid, 6. // 5. Holtzman, 23. // 6. Ibid. // 7. Van Doesburg, ‘Manifest I van “De Stijl”, 1918’, in De Stijl, vol. II, no. I, November 1918, pp. 2-5 // 8. Mansbach, 27. // 9. Mondrian, ‘Natuurlijke en abstracte realiteit’ in De Stijl, vol. III, no. 3, 1920, p.28) 6 [RP] // 10. Mansbach, 1. // 11. Ibid. 12. Baljeu, 191. // 13. Ibid. // 14. Ibid. // 15. Mansbach, 90. // 16. Padovan, 46. // 17. Ibid. // 18. Ibid. // 19. Baljeu, 70. // 20. Mansbach, 47. // 21. Van Doesburg, ‘Elementarism and it’s origins, De Stijl, Vol.8, No.87/89, pp.234. // 22. Baljeu, 76. // 23. Mansbach, 119. // 24. Van Doesburg, The New Architecture

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and Its Consequences, in JB, 191. // 25. Baljeu, 67. // 26. Padovan, 43. // 27. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 139. // 28. Mondrian, ‘De nieuwe beelding’, in De Stijl, vol. I, no. 8, 1918, p. 51.) 44 [RP] // 29. Baljeu, 80. // 30. Ibid, 95. // 31. Mondrian, 54. Bibliography:// Blotkamp, C. Mondrian: The Art of Destruction, Reaktion Books, London, 1994, p.15. // Doesburg, Theo van. Slotbemerkingen. De Stijl, vol. II, no. 10, 1919. // Doig, Allan. Theo Van Doesburg: Painting into Architecture, Theory into Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge // University Press, 1986. Doig, Allan. The Architecture of De Stijl and the Western Philosophical Tradition in Wonen TABK, no. 15-16, 1982, pp 4950. // Hegel, G.W.F.. The Philosophy of History, New York: Dover Publications, 1956. // Hedrick, Hannah L. Theo Van Doesburg: Propagandist and Practitioner of the Avant-Garde, 1909-1923. //Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1973. // Mansbach, Steven. Visions of Totality: Laszlo MogolyNagy, Theo Van Doesburg, and El Lissitzky. Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1978. // Mondrian, ‘De nieuwe beelding’, in De Stijl, vol. I, no. 8, 1918, p. 51 // Mondrian, Piet. “Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art,” in Circle, Martin, Nicholson, & Gabo, London, 1937. // Padovan, Richard. Towards Universality: Le Corbusier, Mies and De Stijl. London: Routledge, 2002. // Plato, Timaeus. // Ringbom, Sixten. The Sounding Cosmos: A Study in the Spiritualism of Kandinksy and the Genesis of Abstract Painting. Abo [Finland]: Abo Akademi, 1970 // Sihare, Laxmi P. Oriental Influences on Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, 1909-1917,” Diss. New York University 1965

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The Generic City in S,M,L,XL Professor Mark Wigley The History of Architectural Theory GSAPP, New York 2011

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The Generic City in S,M,L,XL Professor Mark Wigley The History of Architectural Theory GSAPP, New York 2011

S,M,L,XL Theoretical Context: // S,M,L,XL, published in 1994, almost twenty years after Delirious New York, is a hyper amalgamation of OMA’s built work and Rem Koolhaas’s theoretical ideas that spun off from the theory of Manhattanism established two decades prior. With 1376 pages, 6 pounds and 7.5 cm thickness, S,M,L,XL, pioneered a new typology of the architectural monograph. An array of essays, manifestos, diaries, fiction, travelogues, and meditations on the contemporary city are set within a flexible framework organized according to scale, and measured against a seemingly disconnected dictionary of ‘terms’ newly defined by Koolhaas. // Placed within the

context of Koolhaas’s theoretical work at large, S,M,L,XL is one of his most crucial meditations on the present condition of urbanity. Assuming globalization, hypercapitalism and the control of the media to be unstoppable universal forces, Koolhaas popularizes the discourse through the seductive and concentrated use of imagery, statistics and a language branded by an idiosyncratic style of fantasy and irony. The mutation of content serves to disconnect the reader from a presupposed vision of the city, and to a certain degree, obscures Koolhaas’s intentions behind a facade of ‘facts’. // Likewise, within the context of architectural theory as a whole, S,M,L,XL succeeded in using the seductive power

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and manipulation of the media as a tool to redefine, and popularize the image of the architect. Simultaneously, architectural discourse when stretched to the scale of the urban, and in turn, the global, liberates the architect from a position of responsibility, to one of data-collector and observer. “According to Derrida we cannot be whole, according to Baudrillard we cannot be real, according to Virilio we cannot be there”1 // Rem Koolhaas claims in the introduction that the architectural profession is plagued by an unavoidable incoherence and lack of control; coherence imposed on an architect’s work is either cosmetic or the result of self-censorship.2 Imposed coherence is in fact avoided in the organization and graphic layout of S,M,L,XL, yet, the continuity of tone and content, visual pollution, and density and of information does in itself contribute to a sense of coherence. // Koolhaas purports that in order to restore honesty and clarity to the relationship between the architect and the public, S,M,L,XL makes disclosures about the conditions under which architecture is now produced. He admits to its epic scale being both arrogant and hesitant; taking into account the inevitable condition of urban uncertainty, and placing his theory in a context of doubt, with the hope that it will render it more convincing: “It tries to deflate and reinflate architecture - to destroy and rebuild. On the basis of contemporary givens, it tries to find a new realism about what architecture is and what it can do. In other words, this is a painfully utopian enterprise.”3 // It can be assumed, therefore, 1. Rem Koolhaas, “Whatever Happened to Urbanism” in S,M,L,XL. New York: Monacelli Press, 1995, P 958-969. 2. Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City” in S,M,L,XL. New York: Monacelli Press, 1995, xix 3. Ibid.

that the intended audience is the general public. The graphic layout, and overload of information, do in fact appeal to popular consumer culture, yet, it can be argued that through the constant ‘destruction and reconstruction’ of meaning, the essays and theoretical content are greatly inaccessible and highly self-referential. // For the purpose of this analysis, The Generic City, arguably one of S,M,L,XL’s most influential essays, will be put under the theoretical microscope. The strategic role and intention of the theory will be examined through the dissection of its form, both visual and theoretical. The use of devices such as language, punctuation, italicizing and quotation marks, will be analyzed in their individual contribution to establishing tone, defining argument, and rejecting common assumptions. The Generic City: Form:// The essay is opened with five blurry images of urban landscapes. Nothing less than a subliminal attack, these images contain the key elements of the Generic City: roads, buildings and nature. The text is organized into seventeen categories, which are in turn subdivided into sections. Fully justified, both horizontally and vertically across the page, the essay presents itself as one solid block of thought, with no breaks or pauses. This format assists in establishing a continuity of thought and a basis for the endless and mostly vacant assumptions that are presented consistently throughout. The essay is then concluded with a series of images of a generic city; a canvas upon which we can now project our newly found understanding. // Order:// ne could assume that the seventeen categories that form the argument of The Generic City are organized according to a descending logic of scale, from the global to the local, or from the general to the specific (fig. 1, page 5.) Despite the use of objective and multi-disciplinary titles, the content never moves beyond the realm of the generic - of cyclical (self-

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Content Order

Content Length (lines)

Content Length (points)

1. Introduction 2. Statistics 3. General 4. Airport 5. Population 6. Urbanism 7. Politics 8. Sociology 9. Quarters 10. Program 11. Architecture 12. Geography 13. Identity 14. History 15. Infrastructure 16. Culture 17. End

1. Urbanism (96) 2. Architecture (75) 3. Introduction (72) 4. Quarters (53) 5. General (31) 6. Airport (29) 7. Sociology (22) 8. History (19) 9. End (16) 10. Statistics (15) 11. Program (15) 12. Culture (15) 13. Geography (13) 14. Infrastructure (12) 15. Population (11) 16. Identity (8) 17. Politics (6)

1. Urbanism (16) 2. Architecture (13) 3. Quarters (9) 4. Introduction (6) 5. General (6) 6. Statistics (4) 7. Airport (4) 8. Sociology (4) 9. Program (4) 10. History (4) 11. Geography (3) 12. Culture (3) 13. Population (2) 14. Politics (2) 15. Infrastructure (2) 16. Identity (1) 17. End (1)

fig. 1

fig. 2

referential) architectural rhetoric. The widening of the discussion, and the exploration of the Generic City through the lens of other fields can be interpreted as an attempt by Koolhaas to further convince the audience of firstly, the existence of the Generic City, and secondly, it’s validity as an urban theory. // Where one would expect precision, as in a section titled ‘Statistics’, instead, we are presented with suspicious assumptions masquerading as facts: “Not only has its size increased, its numbers have too. In the early seventies it was inhabited by an average of 2.5 million official (and +/500,000 unofficial) residents; now it hovers around the 15 million mark”.4 Taking into account the date of publication (1994), are we to assume that Koolhaas is referring to the following cities: Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Calcutta, Dhaka, Jakarta, Osaka, Seoul, and Beijing? (see Appendix i) // Indeed, the described population density, alongside the placement of the Generic City, “...toward the tropical - converging around the equator...”5 suggests that the majority of

these cities could in fact be the stages of Koolhaas’s Generic City. However, in his equally deceiving section titled ‘Population,’ Koolhaas purports that the Generic City is “seriously multiracial, on average 8% black, 12% white, 27% Hispanic, 37% Chinese/ Asian, 6% indeterminate, 10% other. Not only multiracial, also multicultural.”6 The discourse once again returns to the realm of the generic, lacking any form of geographic specificity, as it is difficult to say that Buenos Aires, Jakarta and Calcutta, for instance, can be classified by this demographic cross section. // It must be said that the concept of the Generic City has traditionally been assumed to be the result of Western neoimperialism; a plague of universal globalization, capitalism and the rise of the multi-national corporation. Indeed, global landscapes and cultures have been leveled since the 80’s to accommodate the laissezfaire economy that has gone global. One cannot ignore the presence of the generic, both in form and in content, in this context. This legitimizes the use of ‘Politics’, ‘Sociology’, ‘History’, ‘Culture’ etc. as theoretical ‘brigades’ to launch his theory. It

4 Ibid, 1250. 5 Ibid, 1250.

fig. 3

6 Ibid, 1252.

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also provides ample opportunity for reality to enter the argument; which it consistently fails to do. // Despite the use of objective and multi-disciplinary titles, the content never moves beyond the realm of the generic; the ordering of the titles, from global to local, from generic to specific is not reflected in the content, remaining in the Rem realm of fantasy. Perhaps, then, the internal composition of each section works to create emphasis within the overall argument, as opposed to the individual titles themselves? A re-ordering of the content according to length and points (fig.’s 2 & 3) is quite telling. The first four categories, namely: Urbanism, Architecture, Introduction and Quarters reflect the focus of Koolhaas’s work at large (the dialectic of program + urbanism). // It becomes apparent that the focus of the essay is indeed the question of the city as it can be understood through the lens of urbanism and architecture. Assuming this to be true, if we were to focus only on these categories what argument could be inferred? To what extent do the failures of urban planning and architecture that emerged after the Athens Charter play a role in Koolhaas’s defence of the Generic? // The ‘Introduction’ commences with a series of questions: “Is the contemporary city like the contemporary airport - “all the same”? Is it possible to theorize this convergence? And if so, to what ultimate configuration is it aspiring? Convergence is possible only at the price of shedding identity. That is usually seen as a loss. But at the scale at which it occurs, it must mean something. What are the disadvantages of identity, and conversely, what are the advantages of blankness? What if this seemingly accidental - and usually regretted - homogenization were an intentional process, a conscious movement away from difference towards similarity? ...What is left after identity is stripped? The Generic?”3 // We are led to believe that the

Generic City is yet to be defined, however, these questions are strategically used to place the reader in a position of doubt, and are immediately superseded by a series of assumptions. “Is it possible to theorize this convergence” already assumes that the convergence between the contemporary city and the contemporary airport exists. Koolhaas then uses this concept of convergence to support his theory on the loss of identity, and it’s productive potential. Using scale as a justification of its meaning, Koolhaas then creates a framework within which the conventionally positive understanding of identity is turned into a negative. Conveniently this stripping of identity then becomes the definition and justification of the Generic City. // The argument against identity is constructed in the introduction and focuses namely on: the limitations created by the association of a city’s identity with its urban (historic) core; the resulting problem of the periphery; the core’s necessity to be both the oldest and newest part of the city, the relentless cycle of dependency this creates; and finally, the fossilizing effect of tourism on a city’s character and identity. Reflecting on the approach of CIAM, and the post-war influence of the Athens Charter, the dialectic on the tabula rasa of the periphery is all to familiar. // The negative implications of the maintenance of a city’s identity are immediately rectified by the Generic City: The Generic City addresses the “evils” that were ascribed to the traditional city before our love for it became unconditional. The serenity of the Generic City is achieved by the evacuation of the public realm, as in an emergency fire drill. The urban plane now only accommodates necessary movement, fundamentally the car; highways are a superior version of boulevards and plazas, taking more and more space; their design, seemingly aiming for automotive efficiency,

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as in fact surprisingly sensual, a utilitarian pretense entering the domain of smooth space.”7 // In ‘Urbanism’, Koolhaas juxtaposes the original model of the ‘moderns’, where “the residual was merely green,” with that of the generic: “in the Generic City, because the crust of civilization is so thin, and through its immanent tropicality, the vegetal is transformed into Edenic Residue, the main carrier of its identity: a hybrid of politics and landscape.”8 Could it be assumed, therefore, that the failures of the moderns were climatic? That the generic has reached its zenith in the tropical? Perhaps one example, then, could be the use of (re-invigorating and lush green) public space to control the masses in the citystate of Singapore. // The nostalgia for the moderns continues further in the ‘Urbanism’ section: Imagine an open space, a clearing in the forest, a leveled city. There are three elements: roads, buildings, and nature; they coexist in flexible relationships, seemingly without reason, in spectacular organizational diversity...Specific cities still seriously debate the mistakes of architects for instance, their proposals to create raised pedestrian networks with tentacles leading from one block to the next as a solution to congestion - but the Generic City simply enjoys the benefits of their inventions: decks, bridges, tunnels, motorways - a huge proliferation of the paraphernalia of connection...9 By questioning the perceived failures of these ideas, Koolhaas suggests that wider urban failures are no longer generated by local problems but by global phenomena. Which is why, he assumes the death of planning, and the unpredictability of cities flourishing or perishing. In the context of the 2008 real estate crash, this

7. Ibid, 1250.

point of view seems considerably significant; local economies and infrastructures more often than not are being controlled by the global market. Moreover, the section on architecture stands as a criticism to the mass ‘corporatization’ of the industry itself, and to the increasing power that developers hold. Referring to the architecture of the Generic City, Koolhaas states: They are prepared in the 10,000 architectural offices nobody has ever heard of, each vibrant with fresh inspiration. Presumably more modest than their well-known colleagues, these offices are bonded by a collective awareness that something is wrong with architecture that can only be rectified through their efforts...10 // Moreover, in claiming that the architectural style of choice is “post-modern, and will always remain so” Koolhaas is celebrating the illegibility, fragmentation and lack of context that characterized the post-modern. Device:// As aforementioned, the fully justified text presents itself as one solid block of thought, with no breaks or pauses. Despite the theoretical significance of the titles used, the style of the essay leans more towards a stream-of-consciousness (an interior monologue), where shows of irony and disguised humour are not contained. The use of colorful metaphors and similes, as well as an endless stream of italicized and quoted terms create a foundation of doubt, upon which Koolhaas thrusts his embellished scenography of the Generic City. // The use of associative leaps in syntax and punctuation create an almost fictional scenario, through which one can observe the image being created without prior bias. As mentioned in his introduction, Koolhaas successfully manages to destruct and then reconstruct through the use of this particular language: “ What if we are witnessing a global liberation movement: “down with character!” What is

8. Ibid, 1253. 9. Ibid, 1254.

10. Ibid, 1261.

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left after identity is stripped? The Generic?”11 // Moreover, parentheses are inserted as afterthoughts, furthering the effect of the stream-of-consiousness approach: Housing is not a problem. It has either been completely solved or totally left to chance; in the first case it is legal, in the second “illegal”; in the first case, towers, or usually, slabs (at the most, 15 meters deep), in the second (in perfect complementary) a crust of improvised hotels... // ...The roads are only for cars. People (pedestrians) are led on rides (as in an amusement park), on “promenades” that lift them off the ground, then subject to a catalogue of exaggerated 12 conditions... // How does this literary style affect the overall efficacy of the argument? The continuity of thought and fragmentation of imagery that results from this use of language is reminiscent itself of the experience of speed in the city. We are inundated with fragments if information, more or less related to each other in one, seemingly linear stream of thought. // However, like the advertising boards we see on the highway, this essay is meant to be read at 120 mph. // His allusions to ‘mouse traps’, ‘smooth space’, ‘Edenic Residue’, ‘unaroused vaginal folds’, and finally the market scene in the Holy Land, serve as distractions, seemingly harmless images that subliminally attack the reader from within, rendering his argument more believable. These devices are used as images are used in a collage; a juxtaposition of seemingly disparate parts as a method of reconstructing meaning. // Furthermore, one could argue that the excessive employment of question marks is a device used to justify the necessity of the argument. By posing so much as unknown, the need for the Generic City’s consideration becomes legitimate. However, in most cases,

the questions are posed and answered simultaneously as a means of concealing the inherent assumptions that form the basis of the argument. // For instance the geographic gravitation of the Generic City towards the equator and tropical climates is first posed as a question: “Did the Generic City start in America? Is it so profoundly unoriginal that 13 it can only be imported?” This concept is accepted without further interrogation and subsequently repeated as fact: “The Generic City’s aspiration toward tropicality automatically implies the rejection of any 14 lingering reference to the city as fortress,” and “because the Generic City is largely Asian, its architecture is generally air15 conditioned...” The technique of posing a question, providing and answer, and subsequently assuming its truth is used consistently throughout the text. // Moreover the use of short assertive statements reinforce the assumed validity of Koolhaas’s own declarations. Figure 4, adjacent, illustrates a few. // Contributing to the overall sensation of myth and fiction is the excessive use of both italics and quotation marks. Words are italicized as a means of creating both emphasis and doubt, and reversing negative connotations. For instance “...Compared to the classical city, the Generic City is sedated, usually perceived from a sedentary position...” // “...The Generic City is held together, not by an overdemanding public realm - progressively debased in a surprisingly long sequence in which the Roman Forum is to the Greek agora what the shopping mall is to the high street - but by the residual...” // “...But its most dangerous and most exhilarating discovery is that planning makes no difference whatsoever...” // “...That used to

11. Ibid, 1248.

14. Ibid, 1255.

12. Ibid, 1253, 1254.

15. Ibid, 1261.

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Assertive Statements

“Quotations”

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

It is the city without history. It is big enough for everybody. It is easy. It does not need maintenance. It is equally exciting - or unexciting every where. It is “superficial” - like a hollywood studio lot. It can produce a new identity every Monday morning. It tends towards the tropical. The airport is a concentrate of both the hyper-local and the hyperglobal The Generic city is seriously multi-racial The Generic city is always founded by people on the move The Generic City is all that remains of what used to be the city The street is dead.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

“all the same”? [the contemporary airport] “small” [the past] quest for “character” 1248 “bridge-and-tunnel-people” “the most important place” [the center] “public” space it is “superficial” like a hollywood studio lot individual “moments” are spaced too far apart the major characteristic of the city “business” the generic city addresses the “evils” that were ascribed to the traditional city “undiscovered” airports in the second “illegal” referring to housing “the power” was still undiluted sometimes the “road” is lost on these “sites” usually the cronies of the “leader”

fig. 4

fig. 5

be the office - which at least implied a coming and a going, assumed the presence of other important accommodations elsewhere...even doubling as shopping malls they are the closest we have to urban 16 existence, 21st century style... // The use of italics succesfully reverses meaning by subverting normal connotations, one automatically questions whether being sedated, or residual space are negative things. By italicizing the ‘and’ above, emphasis is placed on exhilarating, negating or even fetishizing, the danger expressed. Similarly, in his commentary of the hotel in the Generic City, by claiming that it is the last thread of urban existence, Koolhaas generates a feeling of panic, of entrapment which is strategically used as an introduction to the section on Architecture. // Finally, quotation marks are used as a means of questioning conventional notions of urbanism and suggests that these theories and notions should no longer be taken for

granted. Moreover, by placing ideas in the safety zone of quotation marks, Koolhaas detaches his own responsibility when the coinage of the terms are his own. Figure 5 below illustrates a selection of these quoted terms. // The use of rhetorical questions to establish the conversation of the Generic City, as well as consistent allusions to abstract statistics and ideas make one question the argument posed in this essay. If Generic City is considered to be a representation of the theory contained within S,M,L,XL, its success at restoring “a kind of honesty and clarity to the relationship between architect and public” could be questioned. // The embedded contradictions and lack of specificity make one question the underlying intentions of the essay. In the context of the work at large, Generic City, serves as a provocative start to a new way of envisioning the city, and in its contradictions and inconsistencies, is representational of our current urban condition.

16. Ibid, 1250, 1252, 1255, 1260.

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urbanism and suggests that these theories and notions should no longer be taken for granted. Moreover, by placing ideas in the safety zone of quotation marks, Koolhaas detaches his own responsibility when the coinage of the terms are his own. Figure 5 below illustrates a selection of these quoted terms. // The use of rhetorical questions to establish the conversation of the Generic City, as well as consistent allusions to abstract statistics and ideas make one question the argument posed in this essay. If Generic City is considered to be a representation of the theory contained within S,M,L,XL, its success at restoring â&#x20AC;&#x153;a kind of honesty and clarity to the relationship between architect and publicâ&#x20AC;? could be questioned. // The embedded contradictions and lack of specificity make one question the underlying intentions of the essay. In the context of the work at large, Generic City, serves as a provocative start to a new way of envisioning the city, and in its contradictions and inconsistencies, is representational of our current urban condition.

Occupy Wall Street: The Utilization And Role of Social Media and Public Space Within Contemporary Political Activism Professor Reinhold Martin Philosophies of the City GSAPP, New York 2012

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Occupy Wall Street: The Utilization And Role of Social Media and Public Space Within Contemporary Political Activism Professor Reinhold Martin Philosophies of the City GSAPP, New York 2012

Introduction:// In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt makes a clear distinction between three spatial conditions of human interaction: the Private, the Public, and the Social. The rise of the ‘social’ public realm, or ‘mass society’, has, according to Arendt, been at the expense of both the private and public realms; based on laws of conformity, mass consumerism and the concept of the ‘common good’, the space of the Social silences the voice of the individual, as well as severing his or her access to political participation. In the fifty-four years since the publication of this highly influential text, the conditions of ‘mass society’ along with their inherent implications on both

our public and private lives, have calcified as a result of the global epidemic of neoliberal socio-economic policy. // The public realm, once the milieu of our bios politikos, has been transformed by the ubiquitous and amorphous exchange of capital into a space that is structured solely for and by consumption. The shaping of this condition, as both spectacle and culture, will be understood through the lens of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. It can be said that the evolution of mass media towards a decentralized digital network of independent voices is challenging this notion of the Social by

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re-introducing the presence of difference, freedom, and ‘public’ appearance. These texts will be referred to as a means of questioning the limits of both social media and the public realm as space of political action. In the context of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, to what extent has the Social, as defined by Arendt, merged with the Private and Political, and in what ways have these terms, and the space of political action itself been redefined? The Opposition of the Private and the Public:// In The Human Condition, the private and public realms are presented as existing in opposition to each other. Placed historically in Ancient Greece, the text aims to explore the origins of this distinction as a means of understanding the third, relatively modern condition of the Social. Based less on spatial distinctions, Arendt explores the conditions of each realm through the embedded actions contained within them. In this light, the notion of the private has less to do with the individual ownership of space, but instead represents all human activities that are born of necessity. The origins of the social can be found in the private, or otherwise, pre-political condition, which is characterized by inequality, labor and violence. Labor, both as a means of providing nourishment, as well as in the creation of life, were considered actions of necessity, and hence, excluded from the realm of the public. // “According to Greek thought, the human capacity for political organization is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family. The rise of the citystate meant that man received “besides his private life a sort of second life, his bios politikos. Now every citizen belongs to two orders of existence; and there is a sharp distinction in his life between what

is his own (idion) and what is communal (koinon).” (Arendt, 24.) The realm of the political was distinctly created through action (praxis) and speech (lexis), and could exist only within a space of freedom, where natural bodily struggles and social hierarchies were excluded. // The shape of this common space was formed by the relationship between one subjective body to another, and for which, no common measurement or denominator could ever be devised. “For though the common world is the common meeting ground of all, those who are present have different locations in it, and the location of one can no more coincide with the location of another than the location of two objects. Being seen and being heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position.” (Arendt, 57.) It is in this context, that the exclusion of labour, and subsequently wealth (or capital) from the space of political action gains significance; for it represents a space of diversity, where the collective is formed around the common exchange of discrete praxis and lexis. // Inasmuch as the political represented a space of appearance for the individual, where one could verify their own existence through discrete praxis and lexis, it also represented a physical space that could contain within it a register of collective political exchange throughout time. “For the polis was for the Greeks, as the res publica was for the Romans, first of all their guarantee against the futility of individual life, the space protected against this futility and reserved for the relative permanence, if not immortality, of mortals.” (Arendt, 56.) Our streets and squares can be perceived, therefore, as physical manifestations of the body politic’s desire to create a register of its own existence. // In reality, however, the

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conception and construction of the public realm is based symbolically on the image of the body politic; its physical manifestation determined solely by those in power. Throughout history, architectural and urban form have been unabashedly recycled to control society through its own representation; the use of neoclassical architecture in both Schinkel’s plan for Berlin and Jefferson’s plan for Washington D.C. are exemplifications of this unfortunate condition. “Three styles of architecture coexisted in Paris in Jefferson’s day: the French, the antique and the revolutionary. These found expression in three genres: private, public and theoretical. Private architecture was the genre of choice of the French style, since two centuries of tradition had formed the French model of a dwelling, while public architecture was open to a Greek or Roman treatment. Jefferson himself made this distinction, when for the president’s house he proposed the imitation of French models, while for the capitol he preferred the adoption of the models of antiquity, which have had the approbation of thousands of years.” (Adams, 168.) The Rise of the Social (Mass Society):// “The emergence of the social realm, which is neither private nor public, strictly speaking, is a relatively new phenomenon whose origin coincided with the emergence of the modern age and which found its political form in the nation-state.” (Arendt,28.) In the context of the modern metropolis, therefore, the forces that determine the construction of the public realm, both physically and symbolically, should not go unmentioned. For it is the power of the nation-state, and ultimately the shift towards neoliberal economic policy that broke the boundary between the Social, (formerly embedded within the Private), and the Public Realm.

// This extraction of the Social from the Private resulted in the formation of the ‘invisible hand’ or the ‘national household’. This evolution took place as a stepped process of substitution: the family unit being substituted by larger social class divisions, and ultimately social class being substituted by ‘Mass Society’. It is true that one-man, monarchical rule, which the ancients stated to be the organizational device of the household, is transformed in society--as we know it today, when the peak of the social order is no longer formed by the royal household of an absolute ruler--into a kind of no man rule. But this nobody, the assumed one interest of society as a whole in economics as well as the assumed one opinion of polite society in the salon, does not cease to rule for having lost its personality. As we know, from the most social form of government, that is, from bureaucracy (the last state of government in the nation-state just as one-man rule is benevolent despotism and absolutism was its first), the rule by nobody is not necessarily no-rule; it may indeed, under certain circumstances, even turn out to be one of its cruelest and most tyrannical versions. (Arendt, 40.) // The dissolution of the social into the political exists explicitly in the neoliberal nation-state. Governed by bureaucratic, and seemingly horizontal control, this new ‘national household’ excludes the possibility of action, which formerly was excluded from the private household itself. “Instead, society expects from each of its members a certain kind of behavior, imposing innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to “normalize” its members, to make them behave, to exclude spontaneous action or outstanding achievement.” (Arendt, 40.) The Dissolution of the Private and Public Realms:// Neoliberal economic

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policy, born during the aftermath of the Second World War, advocates laissez faire deregulation, the privatization of national entities and a relinquishing of control and power from the public to the private sector. The success of this model depended directly on the ability to transform the body politic into a speculative statistical model: Economics--until the modern age a not too important part of ethics and politics and based on the assumption that men act with respect to their economic activities as they act in every other respect--could achieve a scientific character only when men had become social beings and unanimously followed certain patterns of behaviour, so that those who did not keep the rules could be considered to be asocial or abnormal...The application of the law of large numbers and long periods to politics or history signifies nothing less than the wilful obliteration of their very subject matter, and it is a hopeless enterprise to search for meaning in politics or significance in history when everything that is not everyday behavior or automatic trends has been ru led out as immaterial. (Arendt, 42.) Ultimately this shift in control and power led to the inevitable redistribution of wealth and power into the hands of the few. Through neoliberal economic policy, the public sector combined the activities of labour and production, previously contained within the private, into the realm of the political, ultimately silencing the voice of the individual, as well as severing his or her access to political participation. // The transformation of the individual praxis and lexis, into a collective structuring of behaviour, or conformism, was a prerequisite to the success of the neoliberal model of economic growth. Dependent on the constant expansion of production and consumption, however, this model could

only be enabled with the participation of the body politic. Now absorbed into the realm of the social, bodily needs and the sustenance of human life became questions of political control. “Perhaps the clearest indication that society constitutes the public organization of the life process itself may be found in the fact that in a relatively short time the new social realm transformed all modern communities into societies of laborers and jobholders; in other words, they became at once centered around the activity necessary to sustain life.” (Arendt, 46.) // In The Society of the Spectacle, first published in 1967, Guy Debord unveils the mechanisms used by the Social to ensure its own survival. At the time of publication, individual participation in public life had already been reduced to the cyclical and isolated activities of production and consumption; which in turn were fed by mechanisms created to produce artificial need. These mechanisms, namely mass media and advertising exist as image making machines, enabling the Social to exist as a mediated representation of itself via the spectacle. “The spectacle appears at once as society itself, as a part of society and as a means of unification...The unity it imposes is merely the official language of generalized separation.” (Debord, 12.) // The Spectacle sustains the development and the constant production of manufactured need. “Replacing that necessity by the necessity of boundless economic development can only mean replacing the satisfaction of primary human needs, now met in the most summary manner, by a ceaseless manufacture of pseudo-needs, all of which come down in the end to just one - namely, the pseudoneed for the reign of an autonomous economy to continue.” (Debord, 34.) In this context, alienated

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consumption is added to alienated production as an inescapable duty of the masses; ultimately coerced into the production of the Spectacle itself. // The growth of the tertiary or service sector is a direct result of the necessity to continuously create new forms of employment, as a means of manufacturing need. The bureaucratic nation-state has now been superseded by a network of postindustrial, service based global cities, that provide escalated levels of consumption to meet the escalated levels of production enabled by cheap outsourced labour markets. “The capitalist production system has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between one society and the next. This unification is also a process, at once extensive and intensive, of trivialization. Just as the accumulation of commodities mass-produced for the abstract space of the market inevitably shattered all regional and legal barriers, as well as all those corporative restrictions that served in the Middle Ages to preserve the quality of craft production, so too it was bound to dissipate the independence and quality of places.” (Debord, 120.)7 Technology and Isolation:// The efficacy of the Spectacle, and as such, the domination of the Social through neoliberal economic policy, is heavily reliant on technology and its potential to mediate reality. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments was first published in 1944. In a chapter titled ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ we bare witness to the evolutionary beginning of mediated society (through the radio, telephone, films, magazines and advertising) . “The need which might resist central control has already been suppressed by the control of the individual

consciousness. The step from the telephone to the radio has clearly distinguished the roles. The former still allowed the subscriber to play the role of the subject, and was liberal. The latter is democratic: it turns all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same.” (Horkheimer, 122. ) // The aesthetic and formal consistency of these modes of mediation homogenize culture to the extent // where it becomes a commodity itself. It is important to recall that in Arendtian terms, the Public realm was reserved for individuality; the commons were a space for the individual to confirm the reality of their own individual existence. The mediated reality that takes the place of the political, deprives the individual subject of a space of collective reflection. “Spectators are linked only by a one-way relationship to the very center that maintains their isolation from one another. The spectacle thus unites what is separate, but it unites it only in its separateness.” (Debord, 22.) The psychological consequences of this collective disintegration result in both social alienation and self-estrangement. According to Arendt, “Under modern circumstances, the deprivation of “objective” relationships to others and a reality guaranteed through them has become the mass phenomenon ofloneliness, where it has assumed its most extreme and most anti-human form.” (Arendt, 59.) The social disintegration brought about by the domination of the spectacle over reality, and the incessant cycle of producing and consuming imagery has dissolved the individual boundaries between what is public and what is shared, leading to loneliness and dissolution: “The bourgeois whose existence is split into a business and a private life, whose private life is split into keeping up his public

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image, and intimacy, whose intimacy is split into the surly partnership of marriage and the bitter comfort of being quite alone, at odds with himself and everybody else, is already virtually a Nazi, replete both with enthusiasm and abuse; or a modern citydweller who can now imagine friendship as a “social contact”: that is: as being in social contact with others with whom he has no inward contact.” (Horkheimer, 155.) The Space of Appearance:// It can be said that the evolution of mass media towards a decentralized digital network of independent voices is challenging this notion of the Social by re-introducing the presence of difference, freedom, and ‘public’ appearance. Indeed, internet blogs and forums provide a space for the individual to participate in the exchange of lexis. Where the individuals are brought together, in digital assemblies, however, the structure must already exist. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are by no means neutral spaces. They are highly mediated both through the use of advertising, and by their inherent structure and aesthetic which homogenizes the individual and reduces the possibility of action. // According to Arendt, the space of appearance “comes into being whenever men are together in the manner of speech and action, and therefore predates and precedes all formal constitution of the public realm and the various forms of government, that is, the various forms in which the public realm can be organized.” (Arendt, 199.) The Polis, therefore, is not a set physical location, but the “organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.” (Arendt, 198.) Can the Polis exist through the re-appropriated space of social media when used as a space for

collective acting and speaking? To what extent can the body itself be removed from the collective acts of speech and assembly? Reappropriating the Social:// On September 7th, 2011, at a lecture titled: ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’, Judith Butler used Arendt’s notion of the space of appearance as an attempt to understand the contemporary re appropriation of the Social, formerly political space. Drawing on similarities between the Arab Spring, the 2011 European uprisings, and the beginnings of the Occupy Wall Street movement, she emphasizes the role of bodies congregating in space. As was witnessed in Zuccotti Park, as well as occupations throughout the country, the congregation of bodies itself challenged the ‘publicness’ of the space. “So when we think about what it means to assemble in a crowd, a growing crowd, and what it means to move through public space in a way that contests the distinction between public and private, we see some way that bodies in their plurality lay claim to the public, find and produce the public through seizing and reconfiguring the matter of material environments; at the same time, those material environments are part of the action, and they themselves act when they become the support for action.” (Butler) // As aforementioned, the Social Realm (that of exchange, media, culture and capital) has managed to collapse the previously understood notions of the Private and Political. With this distinction in mind, the physical occupation of public space, as that of Tahrir Square or Zuccotti Park, gains new significance. These occupations represent both a bodily and linguistic exercise of rights, through the explicit display of human bodily needs. “On the one hand, these bodies are productive and performative. On the other hand, they

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can only persist and act when they are supported, by environments, by nutrition, by work, by modes of sociality and belonging. And when these supports fall away, they are mobilized in another way, seizing upon the supports that exist in order to make a claim that there can be no embodied life without social and institutional support, without ongoing employment, without networks of interdependence and care. They struggle not only for the idea of social support and political enfranchisement, but their struggle takes on a social form of its own. And so, in the most ideal instances, an alliance enacts the social order it seeks to bring about.” (Butler) // It is hard to imagine an effective recreation of the space of appearance when the body itself, as both instance and actor, of human need, is removed. Yet, the role of social media for the organization of bodies in space, communication and information dissemination cannot be ignored. In many ways, the space of the spectacle has been used in favor of those demonstrating. Butler argues that “the street scenes become politically potent only when and if we have a visual and audible version of the scene communicated in live time, so that the media does not merely report the scene, but is part of the scene and the action; indeed, the media is the scene or the space in its extended and replicable visual and audible dimensions. One way of stating this is simply is that the media extends the scene visually and audibly and participates in the delimitation and transposability of the scene.” Does this then suggest that for political action to have an effect, it is required to recreate itself within the space of the spectacle? Is the mediation of an event more significant in its transposability and reproducibility than the event itself? Does the local

require a ‘certain globalizing media’ so that its locality can be established and verified? // Conclusion:// The classical model of society, as painted by Arendt, has been used as a means to contextualize the notions of the public, private, and social. Horkheimer, Adorno and Debord provide both a historical and theoretical account of the evolution of the Social, and its control over the body politic. Half a century later, the waves of political dissidence that have swept both the Arab and Western worlds indicate the inevitable breaking point of this current economic and political system. If change is to be established, however, the space of the political needs to be recreated within the space of the spectacle. Both human assembly and mediated transposability are required. The American Fall was disembodied before the start of the Winter, and we have bared witness to the difficulty of recreating the space of political action without the persistence of assembled bodies. What is the future of the Occupy Movement, and does it need a space to occupy? As Judith Butler explored in her lecture, the physical persistence of bodies in space, i.e. the insertion of the private into the (pseudo) political is a direct form of social commentary. Perhaps the discourse needs to be removed from the ‘public’ space of control and police violence, and into the home. After all, the private realm, is the one with most individual ownership and the least amount of walls that need to be broken. In my mind the answer is clear: we need to #OccupyHousing.

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Bibliography Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994). Judith Butler, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street.â&#x20AC;? Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Venice, September 7th 2011 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) Max Horkeimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007) William H. Adams, The Eye of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., l976, pp. 221-304, 314-15, passim.

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