Surrealism and
OUR EXPERIENCE OF SPACE
zach talmadge
first edition
“Do not try and bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no spoon. Then you will see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” -Spoon Boy to Neo, The Matrix (1999)
TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT UNCONSCIOUS AND SURREALISM AUTOMATIC WRITING, DRAWING, ERRANCE WHY ARCHITECTURE? EXPLORATION MANIPULATION OF SPACE UNFAMILIAR LIGHT ENDLESS INTERIOR SPACES AND THRESHOLDS EXPLORATION THROUGH INTERIOR PERSPECTIVES CHOOSING SITE AND PROGRAM SITE PROGRAM AND RELATION TO EXPLORATION LECTURE BASED SPACE ACTION BASED SPACE DISCUSSION BASED SPACE ORGANIZATION ON SITE MAIN LECTURE HALL CHEM LAB WELL ROOM MAIN DISCUSSION SPACE PHYSICIS LAB SMALL LECTURE HALL CLOSING THOUGHTS WORK CITED | IMAGES BIBLIOGRAPHY
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ABSTRACT Architectural design can be influenced by surrealist philosophy in order to emphasize the unconscious reactions to the inhabitable environment. It severs ties with the familiar and challenges the importance of systematic and institutionalized rationality and function. When standardization is prevalent, people become content. Everything becomes familiar. It exiles any emotional connection that could be made to the activity or object in question. Progress and learning then become obsolete and there is no way to engage the built environment. Surrealism utilizes the unconscious mind to bring back emotional connections to what is experienced. It alters what is normally familiar and forces us to figure out what we are facing. Certain spatial and architectural themes throughout surrealist art were studied in order to understand how to create an experience of space from the unconscious. These themes are: the manipulation of space, endless interior spaces, and thresholds. These themes were studied through exploratory drawings and models. The spatial studies transitioned into an understanding of how unconscious space can be beneficial to a boarding school and enhance the learning capabilities of the standard high school curriculum.
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UCONSCIOUS AND SURREALISM There are three levels of the mind: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The conscious gives us awareness. Using our senses, we take in our surroundings in the form of experiences. Because we cannot remember every experience at once, these experiences are stored in our preconscious as memories. Our conscious has the ability to pull from our preconscious and remember certain memories.1 Our unconscious mind also has access to the preconscious. Instead of pulling full memories, it takes fragments of many memories and combines them into one scene. This scene becomes surrealism. Surrealism solidifies the unconscious into reality and becomes space and architecture. When we dream, the scenes and images constructed are from various past experiences. Nothing is ever made up. Reality is questioned. The signified is removed from the signifier when the signifier is related to others it would not normally be related to. These relationships demonstrate a new interaction. Surrealism’s purpose is to show these dreams in reality and make the connection between the conscious and unconscious mind come full circle. With this understanding the early surrealists developed forms of psychic automatism such as automatic writing, automatic drawing, and errance, which allowed dream experiences to be accessed in reality.
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AUTOMATIC WRITING, DRAWING, AND ERRANCE
Automatic writing and drawing are expressive techniques that allow an individual to practice using the unconscious mind to make decisions. These unconscious decisions translate into something real in forms of written words or drawing marks on a page. It is vital to the success of the writing or drawing that all forms of conscious decision-making are removed from the process. There is no editing, revising, or correcting. No conscious thought is used.
AUTOMATIC WRITING Automatic writing is a training exercise that trains the unconscious to make decisions. Most of the time, it is a page of incohesive rambling. None of it makes sense but what is compelling is the tension between the phrases and sentences. The imagery resembles a dream.
Automatic writing by Cliff Burns:
Flies I want to reassure myself on your smooth shoulders the lithe sweep of your back reminding me of insupportable days youthful fantasies wrought in carefully weeded gardens. My head like a pecked chick. When the trains sang it was a reminder that hope is transported across long plains plumes of smoke with dreams attached. In hot weather the house would leak fleeing moss and sometimes sparrows would roost in the eaves and flies buzz somnolently waiting for inevitable decay.
The Tower Some futile voice insisting words carry the weight and mass of Jupiter like failed suns they draw all light toward them letting no hope escape into harboring dictionaries lexicons of lost languages preserved against extinction by dusty academics housed in Babel towers ivory-colored rooms hardened against nuclear sized impacts the bones of the curators dissolving into polished floors mute mouths gaping wordless. -411
Mystery
Wings
Glow of the mysterious white Hovering the tangent neighborhood street Shadows in the dark Light ignorant Light creation Contrast the midnight atmosphere The possibilities like stars Mysterious white What is activity? Tension of connections through the street What is the point? The howl of the metal insomniac Distant for the reaches of the air Light and dark Dark and light In and out, interchangeable. The side we rarely get to see The silent glow hovering over there Surrounded where it cannot go It does not matter in the distance Another glow Another mystery No such sound but in the distance To hear ones step between the shivers of my spine Thrill through my cheeks of tingling sensation I see it White glow content to remain where they remain Until the mysteries happen upon again
After the morning crow writes his story Seeing the land and the inscription Protrusion, the arm strikes eleven through the glass Eye-lash barks, beading the last of it Dig a hole through the cave Another axis through the mind to be used for purpose Proposed this can of marmalade To mark the rite of passage I can see the other side Because I can fly
Victory It is so far into the distance Seen from a little while ago Pass the bend and into the mine field Light frozen in mid air Locating where you want to be Its in the way Yes it gets all over the place seems never ending The gallery of robotics and smoke and electricity Everything tied into one, one origin? Seeing the fragments where the storage originates Above below to the side we don’t really know It is everywhere but looming in the distance Infects every cavity with the stare Beats down on us and melts us into the solid It does not matter for we like to work We do it for ourselves Automatic writing by Zach Talmadge -410
AUTOMATIC DRAWING Automatic drawing is similar but it is a visual form of representation. It begins to represent something not left for interpretation. With writing, the visuals are only as good as what is being described through words. Drawing is more difficult because it forces the artist to solidify something so everyone can see it. It becomes harder to make pure unconscious decisions.
[Figure 1.0]
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Andre Masson 1924
[Figure 1.1]
ERRANCE Andre Breton and other surrealists were inspired by their interactions with their environment, both building and nature. They practiced a method of surrealist errance. They wandered aimlessly without cause and without direction. “In one sense errance can be understood as part of a tradition of spatial navigation and urban geography.”2 Breton would get together with other surrealists and pick a location at random to travel to. The directionless wandering though an unknown environment sets the stage for unconscious events to appear. There must be no awareness of where you are walking. When you imagine where you are going to go, it familiarizes the environment and the experience. When you are unfamiliar with your surroundings your unconscious begins to fill in areas of discontent and attempts to decipher the contextual information.
WHY ARCHITECTURE? 3
Surrealism began strictly as a literary movement originating with automatic writing. The transition from literature to visuals did not seem possible. A painter could not paint quickly enough to capture the unconscious mind. Painting and other forms of visual art took time and some level of conscious thought in order for the piece to be completed. Joan Miro produced some of the earliest surrealist paintings. He captured the random and illogical imagery of the unconscious mind through painting. From this foundation, other forms of visual art forms were developed. Architecture brings surrealism into the third dimension. A two-dimensional painting is viewed from a comfortable and familiar space. Once the viewer locates the painting inside the familiar space, it loses its surreal effect. “The framing of the object as a two-dimensional representation lets the spectator domesticate its subversiveness and relegate it into the category of comfortable fictions, thereby cancelling both the reality of the work and its potential surreality. Yet even more than photography or sculpture, architecture fully confronts and situates an 4 embodied viewer.” Good architecture is experienced from the inside. You cannot occupy a two-dimensional painting, but you can occupy the space in which the painting sits. The exploration of surreal architecture will immerse the user in the surreal event, instead of being a bystander. They will partake in the interactions of the built environment and will be forced to re-learn how to perceive and use space.
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[Figure 2.0]
Joan Miro, Nocturne, 1940
EXPLORATION If I allow myself to define architecture as a built occupiable space, the surrealist, through their art, created architecture. They certainly use architectural elements to help them portray an image and evoke a particular mood. This next chapter will extract these themes and explore them with the help of drawing and models.
MANIPULATION OF SPACE Architecture defines space. Architecture is within space. Space is an emptiness that stores objects for engagement. We understand space because of the architecture that creates it. Perspective, horizon lines, and vanishing points are the fundamentals of how we perceive our environment. It has become so familiar to us, we don’t consciously think about what it is we are seeing. When these fundamentals are altered, our brain unconsciously knows that something is wrong. We are forced to relearn how to understand space. -407 In order to deconstruct space, there needs to be a strong understanding of how the fundamental building blocks
are used to construct space. Thankfully this understanding was developed over the last five years.
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Rene Magritte, La Géante 1929
Rene Magritte understood and practiced conventional drawing as seen in La Géante (1929). It is a simple but accurate perspective of a man and a woman in an interior room. We can tell the woman is the correct size because of the accuracy of the perspective. We can also tell that the man is as tall as the woman’s knees because of where the horizon line in the painting was drawn. Depth is understood because of traditional vanishing points and proper shading. Magritte knew that if drawings were constructed, they could be deconstructed. By challenging conventional drawing techniques Magritte began to manipulate how we view space.
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Cinema Bleu (1925) deconstructs traditional drawing. The ground plane is essential to understanding where objects lie in relation to one another. When planes and objects move towards a vanishing point, they get smaller and are seen as moving into the distance. In Cinema Bleu the ground plane is non-existent. The understanding of a ground plane is lost because of how the objects interact with it. The red curtains suggest a theater scene. One curtain goes behind the structure in the background and one goes in front. The memory of a traditional theater tells us that these curtains should spatially be on the same plane. The use of shadows creates confusion as to where the objects are located in space. The shadows on the columns, as well as the highlights on the skittle pin, suggest that there is a light source somewhere in the scene, but there are no shadows cast on the ground plane. The sign in the foreground goes off the page. There is no indication whether or not these objects are floating in mid air or sitting on the ground.
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[Figure 3.1]
Rene Magritte, Cinema Bleu, 1925
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Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy in the Streets, 1914
In many of de Chirico’s paintings, the space he creates appears incomplete. “Perspectives are deficient, temporal markers are imprecise and the animated occupation of 5 space is never overt.� To create ambiguity, traditional drawing techniques are challenged. In Mystery and Melancholy in the Street, the arches deteriorate as they move further into the distance. Both buildings where drawn to have separate vanishing points. The traditional way we understand depth and space are altered enough so the viewer has trouble determining where he or she is viewing from and looking to. The interactions with his spaces are left for interpretation. He left his spaces unclear in order to allow for the imagination to fill in what is missing. The viewer cannot see who or what is casting the shadow on the ground. Is it a statue in the middle of an open area? Is it a malicious person waiting to harm the little girl playing in the street? The uncertainty creates tension between the two. The space deteriorating around them brings further anxiety to the painting.
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Many paintings by Conroy Maddox focused on the interactions of people and objects in his paintings. In his painting The Lesson (1938) there are two men, one sitting and one standing, watching a scene happening in a building on the side of a road. “It was among anonymous streets, nameless buildings, roadside hoardings, monuments, shop window displays, and street signs that chance encounters and meaningful coincidences were, according to the surrealists, ready 6 to spring into existence.”
[Figure 5.0]
Conroy Maddox, The Lesson, 1938
Is this a scene from a play happening on a stage? Is it a snapshot from a street these men happened to be walking down? There are four identical windows that frame four different spectacles. The difference happening behind these four windows causes tension. There’s no knowing whether they correlate with each other. That fact is irrelevant. They are next to each other and force a relationship, intended or not. Surrealists intend to relate un-relatable things. It is how they achieve the dream-like effect in their art. Each window provides a different emotion. The standing man must shield his eyes from the scene that has just “sprung into existence.”
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UNFAMILIAR LIGHT White light is fundamental to what we see and how we perceive objects and space. It has become so familiar we don’t consciously think about what allows us to see. Light is the only factor in whether we see or don’t see. There is no such think as darkness, only the lack of light. If we change light to a different color, it drastically changes how we see. It alters what was once absolutely familiar and transforms our understanding of space. We must re-learn how to see, what it means to see, and ultimately how to interact with what we see. The next set of images is a series of light studies in two of the generic spaces that will be talked about later (page -345 to -339). The two spaces were studied with two different materials: chipboard, a non-reflective darker material, and foam core, a semi-reflective white material. It is important to notice the difference in how the light reflects off both materials. It directly relates to how much the space is illuminated and how much contrast shadows have.
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The spaces formed with chipboard absorb much of the light. To illuminate the space the light needs to be more intense. There is a higher contrast between the direct light and the shadows created. The imperfections and the warping of the chipboard are emphasized because the light does not reflect enough to fill every corner of the space. If any texture needs to be highlighted it would be better to use a non-reflective or darker surface. The spaces formed with foam core reflect more light causing a consistent illumination throughout the room with less contrast between light areas and areas with less light. The material does not alter the pure color of the light. There is a glow that makes it seem as if you are occupying a color and not space. -375
ENDLESS INTERIOR SPACES and THRESHOLDS “Aragon engaged architecture and objects not as metaphors but as real spaces which one might enter and inhabit. He describes buildings twice, one as matter-of-fact structures seen objectively, then again from a subjective point of view, as expanding realms that one experiences physically in gradations of shadows, limitless interiors, and strange artificial illumination. The most powerful architectural moments he found at thresholds which he describes as points of friction where two realms are simultaneously present yet unresolved in their differences.� 7 Buildings should not be viewed alone as objects in space, but rather a series of connections that allow for an interior network of endless interaction. Thresholds are the result of two adjacent spaces connecting to one another. For the sake of these explorations, these thresholds are not focused on specifically. Instead they are simply unedited results of how spaces connect both physically and visually. The following drawings are abstract explorations of endless interior spaces.
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EXPLORATION THROUGH INTERIOR PERSPECTIVES One of the most important design techniques is to visualize what a person will see as he or she walks through the building. Interior perspectives become extremely important in understanding how to interact with space. The following images are a series of exploratory perspectives showing the concepts that are discussed in the previous pages.
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The sketches use colored light and manipulated space in order to convey a mood and allow for multiple connections in and out of space. Even though there are multiple connections, these connections are never shown in full. There is never a complete view into another space. These half views are important in creating ambiguity and confusion. There is a struggle to understand the spaces as a whole. The fragmentation is what causes the user to have to explore and learn the environment. Representing light, on paper, proved to be difficult. The colored light in the sketches was represented with colored pencil. It did not capture the atmosphere explored through the light studies. It became more of a painted surface and not light. Colored pencil is something physical, solid, where as light is particles and waves. Experimentation with watercolor began to develop a successful way of representing light. Graphically, people and objects can be used to represent a room filled with light versus a room with painted colored walls. Light infects every surface in an illuminated room. People and objects are also illuminated. Understanding and graphically showing the relationship of light to the objects in the room, creates a realistic rendering of space. -358
CHOOSING SITE AND PROGRAM These studies needed to be grounded in something real. After analyzing the types of spaces explored, space was then looked at with site and program in mind. At this point the drawings began to be populated and I began to design for interactions between people as well as the architecture itself.
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SITE Errance was a technique used to determine the characteristics of existing surreal space in the city of Boston, MA. For a few nights I decided to wander the streets of Boston and videotape some of the unconscious reactions I experienced. I chose nighttime because we experience most of the day when it is light. The nighttime has opportunities for pockets of activity connected by a lack of light. Darkness has eerie stigmata. It is the home of the unknown. Streetlights, car lights, light from windows, provide moments of interruption. It is a glitch in the norm. Daytime is uninteresting because everything is light. There is no variety, no contrast. The high contrast of nighttime is sophisticated and engaging. It is inconsistent and doesn’t allow for a person to become comfortable. Late at night when the majority of the activity is in bed, the random car alarm, or yell activates the night. These moments become singular activities when normally during the day, they would be drowned out by many of the same. The following images are still shots from the movie I made of my errance. I was drawn to the gaps in between buildings. These gaps were in between row houses.
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To choose my site I wandered around Back Bay in Boston, MA until I happened upon a location resembling my previous exploration of errance. My site is at the corner of Marlborough Street and Dartmouth Street. There is a moment where the line of row houses end and provide a gap between the row houses and the end building. The gap disrupts the repetition of the row houses. My proposal will use this void and fill in the alley created by the row houses.
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PROGRAM Education has become one of the most systematic experiences we grow up with. Because of how institutionalized high schools have become, the way we transfer educational information to one another does not have a lasting impact on our lives. I am proposing a boarding school for teenagers that can utilize the surrounding apartments for housing. The spaces being explored will show an understanding of how unconscious reactions to space can be beneficial to a boarding school and enhance the learning capabilities of the standard high school curriculum. Each space is designed to defamiliarize the students with how they perceive and interact with classrooms and their classmates. When put into unfamiliar environments, your brain automatically tries to make sense of your surroundings. When presented with educational material, the students will correlate the learning of a topic with the re-learning of how to interact with the space and other students. This method of space making is more beneficial than the spaces in standard schools because it forces the students to engage in a learning process that creates a lasting impact on his or her education. It fundamentally changes how we transfer information and knowledge to one another.
RELATING PROGRAM TO THE EXPLORATIONS
There were certain spatial characteristics discovered when exploring how to manipulate space. The most basic way to manipulate space is through the vanishing points. Moving the vanishing points will either force the perspective or unforce the perspective. This basic concept was explored very early on. -345
The drawing on the left is an example of a forced perspective. The vanishing points were moved inward making the back surface appear further away. This elongated the middle ground. The focus is on what happens in the middle ground. In the photograph there are two different sized foam balls. They were placed at different depths to appear as though they are the same size. There was an idea of elongating the middle ground while collapsing the sense of depth. The drawing on the right is an example of an unforced perspective. The vanishing points were moved outwards making the back surface appear closer. It put the focus on what was happing on that back wall. To emphasize this, a shadow was cast on the wall.
I began to think about how a boarding school could benefit from these types of spaces. These spaces are designed to promote a certain type of interaction. Three types of programmatic spaces were developed.
LECTURE BASED SPACE Lecture based spaces focused on the transferring of information from one person to a group of people. It is a one sided conversation. The room can benefit from using unforced perspective to emphasize the wall where information is being projected.
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ACTION BASED SPACE Action based spaces are designed to put emphasis on the activities happening in the middle ground. The classrooms hold physics and chemistry labs where the students interact with the architecture in the middle ground. A easiest way to do that is through forced perspective.
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DISCUSSION BASED SPACE One of the most successful ways of learning is through open discussions and debates. Debates force a person to present ideas in an understandable and cohesive manner. It demands that you are an expert at the topic being discussed. Naturally, your ideas will have opposition. Someone is going to challenge your beliefs. The only way to defend your beliefs is to back your claims up with facts. The dialogue between multiple beliefs brings together many different points of view. In order to have absolute knowledge, you have to be able to empathize with another person’s beliefs even if you know they are wrong.
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ORGANIZATION ON SITE From this point I began to truly put myself into these spaces and act as if I was going to school here. I needed some system as to how I was going to organize my building. I am exploring these spaces at different scales. Some of them are for large groups of people and others are for smaller classes. I divided the site up into three zones. Each zone was the foundation of one of the three large-scale academic spaces. These were the points of origin. I started in each of these spaces and determined what kind of connections helped me explore the themes I have explained. These connections led to other spaces. I then put myself in those other spaces and repeated the process. This is how I portrayed the feeling of endless interior spaces. This organization encouraged daily errance. The students would have to wander through the school to get to where they wanted to go. Because there are multiple routes to take, the students would have to make choices spontaneously.
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A STROLL THROUGH SPACE The next part will detail the experiences of each space. Every design decision was made to encourage interaction with the architecture and other students. Each space is designed to change how the student interacts. It forces the student to re-learn how to view and use space. They will correlate the learning of the environment with the learning of educational material.
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MAIN LECTURE HALL The main lecture hall houses a large quantity of students. The main entrance to the seating is up high. The students circulate down into the space. Deep purple light shines down from above. This space is an unforced perspective meaning the main wall the seating faces becomes the focus. The portion of wall the presentations project onto is offset from the wall. As the purple light shines down onto the wall, the light does not distort the presentation. The lecturer speaks on a balcony below the students, out of sight. A yellow light shines diagonally illuminating the bottom portion of the presentation. It also casts the lecturer’s shadow on the wall. As the students sit taking notes, they are not distracted by the lecturer’s mannerisms or appearances. The audience hears a voice but can only see a ghostly shadow pacing back and forth along the bottom of the presentation. It focuses the students’ attention to the educational material being presented.
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CHEM LAB Above the main lecture hall is a chemistry laboratory. The space uses extreme contrasts of light and forced perspective to create endlessness. It is an action space. The focus is on the interactions in the middle ground. Yellow light shines horizontally from one end of the room to the other. This creates unnaturally long shadows. The countertops are arranged so that if the students enter from the back of the room (furthest away from the light), they have to meander their way towards the light in order to place their backpacks down in the raised area. They have to walk towards a seemingly endless room, towards a bright light. When they turn around and look between the counters to the back wall, all they see is a shadow because of the countertops, the other students, and also the storage hanging from the ceiling. One end has no light. The other has all the light. As the students look towards the black, they see the layers of people performing experiments on the layers of countertops and cabinets. It seems endless. Three openings penetrate into the lecture hall allowing purple light to creep into the chemistry laboratory. In the laboratory there are moments where purple light shines from the floor and the wall. It seems as if this room is suspended inside the lecture hall and the light from the lecture hall is piercing through the surfaces.
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WELL ROOM A smaller discussion room also engages with the lecture hall. It is a two level, square room with a green light at the bottom of the well shining upwards. This light is vital to having meaningful discussions between the students using the room. This light is the collector of ideas. The continuous podium at the top level is designed so the students have to lean down into the space, as if they are throwing their voice and their ideas into a collective pool. The only way they can be heard by the students below is if they lean over. As they lean over, the light shining upwards illuminates their face. Everything else is in shadow. An opening creates a visual threshold into the lecture hall. If there is a lecture going on, the students in the discussion space will see the teacher pacing back and forth in and out of view. This is the same teacher the students in the lecture hall see as a shadow. The students below have to interact with channels cut out of the wall. They have two bars that fit into their shoulders. These bars are made out of a semi-elastic material so that they can settle-in to a leaning position over the well. As they lean over the well their face is illuminated. If they don’t lean over the light, their voice will not be heard. Only the students’ faces will be visible. There is no intimidation by a person’s body gestures. It is simply the arguments coming from a fellow student’s mind.
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MAIN DISCUSSION SPACE Discussion spaces are meant to be non-directional. The focus is collectively towards the center and to each other. The main discussion space is circular. There is one stair that allows the students to populate each level. The time the students arrive to the class determines where they stand and what level they are on. There are no assigned seats. The students fill in the empty space. It creates diversity and randomness. No one is in the same location from class to class. This space uses natural light filtered by a red film. A circular oculus provides light to fill the room. The direct light is never in the same position and always moves throughout the day. The oculus is designed in a way to show no thickness in the roof. The red film is located away from the opening so when a student looks up at the oculus, it seems as if he or she is looking outside at a red sky. When it rains water can pool atop the film and change the quality of the light. It creates rippling effects in the room. Clouds can also change the quality of light. It acts as a representation of time. Every second changes the course of history. Debates and open conversations are vital in changing the way people think about a topic and allow for the progression and development of ones ideologies. Surrounding the room are channels cut into the wall. These channels are for students in the top level to hang their coats and backpacks. The students’ own personal belongings act as acoustic paneling, preventing too much reverberation. The students’ personal belongings contribute to the debate. It allows students to hear each other speak. It shows the students sheading their armor and opening up. Their learning materials in their backpacks are put behind them. Only what is in their brain can be used to debate. It forces the students to have to learn the information before they debate it with one another. In contrast to the well room, this space is much more expressive. Everyone is easily seen. The students are free to use whatever gestures they deem appropriate. It works this way because before the class starts they removed a layer of protective clothing. They should be able to use what they are revealing. With a larger group, the students need more than just their voice in order to be heard. They have to grab the attention of their classmates. Their mannerisms help achieve that.
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PHYSICS LAB The channels also allow for visual thresholds in and out of the main discussion room. One of those thresholds connects to a physics laboratory. Again, laboratories are meant to emphasize the actions happening in the middle of the room. The ceiling houses a large consistent orange light that illuminates the middle ground. There is a straight datum line through the center of the room where the students can do experiments and tests with the use of constructed mechanisms. The two ends of the room are made out of burnt wood planks. The students get that burnt smell during class. The matte charcoal color absorbs most of the light. It’s hard to tell how big the end spaces are. Both ends are designed as forced perspectives adding to the idea of an endless room. Because these spaces are dark, the middle ground becomes emphasized. One end connects to the main discussion space. The small opening allows for red light to shine into the physics laboratory. This space has cabinets built flush into the wall. They are storage for the equipment used in the experiments. When opened it reveals a red painted surface. It has a resemblance to the red light shining through the window, only in a solidified state.
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SMALL LECTURE HALL The other room that shares a visual threshold with the large discussion space is a smaller lecture hall. The entrance to this lecture hall circulates the students along the main wall of the room. A blue violet light shines on the wall from the entrance. There are no desks. Instead there are podiums scattered randomly throughout the room. The dimension of each podium is different. It changes how the student interacts with the space, day to day. The students might not get the same desk every day. A yellow-orange light shines at the base of each podium. Light can shine down from within the podium, casting light on the floor. It can shine from the floor up onto the sides of the podium. It creates a situation where visually the podium is either hovering above the ground or sinking into the ground. The designed shapes of the podiums and the light help the students correlate the built environment with what they learned that day. Since every day will be a different experience, nothing becomes familiar.
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CLOSING THOUGHTS All of these spaces are designed for an unconscious interaction with the architecture. There is a certain amount of guidance the architecture provides to get the students to use the space as intended, but it is up to them to interact with the space that is comfortable. I don’t want them to think about how to use the space. They unconsciously interact with the architecture by the activities happening in the space. Both the activity and the architecture compliment each other. The architecture promotes a certain way of interacting with other students. At the same time the process of interacting with other students promotes a certain way of interacting with the architecture. Both these interactions need to be explored in a way that is comfortable to each individual student. For example, in the well room I rendered a girl who squeezed through the bars in order to get a better view of the students above her. She is in the middle of a heated debate with a student above her and he just said something she finds extremely ridiculous. In this moment she breaches the bars and finds comfort leaning on the ridge of the well. The restrictive nature of the space causes emotions to build up. People use arm movement and other gestures to show emotion that this space prevents. If the debate is engaging enough, a student can find his or her own way to unconsciously use the space in a way not originally intended.
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WORK CITED 1 “What Are Freud’s 3 Levels of Mind?” About. Accessed November 15, 2014. http://psychology.about.com/od/ theoriesofpersonality/a/consciousuncon.htm. 2 Cocker, Emma. Desiring to be Led Astray. Papers of Surrealism. PDF File. Surrealism Center, 2007. Accessed November 20, 2014. 3 Turkel, Daniel Gregory. The Message of Surrealist Art: Automatism, Juxtaposition and Dreams. European History AP. 2009 4 Mical, Thomas. Surrealism and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2005. p 178 5 Mical, Thomas. Surrealism and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2005. p 60 6 Mical, Thomas. Surrealism and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2005. p 70 7 Mical, Thomas. Surrealism and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2005. p 32
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Andre Masson, Automatic Drawing, 1924. Source: “Andre Masson and the Automatic Drawing.” The Surrealist Perspective. Accessed December 9, 2014. http://surrealismfall2012.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/andre-masson-andthe-automatic-drawing/. Andre Masson, Automatic Drawing, 1924. Source: “Andre Masson and the Automatic Drawing.” The Surrealist Perspective. Accessed December 9, 2014. http://surrealismfall2012.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/andre-masson-andthe-automatic-drawing/. Joan Miro, Nocturne, 1940. Source: “Joan Miro: Nocturne - 1940.” Joan Miro: Nocturne - 1940. Accessed December 9, 2014. http://www.famousartistsgallery.com/gallery/miro-no.html. Rene Magritte, La Geante, 1929. Source: “The Giantess.” - Rene Magritte. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. http://www.wikiart. org/en/rene-magritte/the-giantess-1929. Rene Magritte, Cinema Bleu, 1925. Source: “Blue Cinema.” - Rene Magritte. Accessed December 9, 2014. http:// www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/blue-cinema-1925. Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy in the Streets, 1914. Source: “Mystery and Melancholy of a Street.” - Giorgio De Chirico. Accessed December 9, 2014. http://www.wikiart.org/en/giorgio-de-chirico/mystery-andmelancholy-of-a-street-1914 Conroy Maddox, The Lesson, 1938. Source: The Independent. Accessed December 9, 2014. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/british-surrealists-minor-league-but-major-players-834236. html?action=gallery.
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