Grad Show Board...

The actual carved piece of balsa wood is missing in the sequence.

The idea behind this is that the final outcome of the woodblock print is the product of several steps, each cataloged as a series of events. I view the carving itself in the same way, each piece of wood taken out is a stamp of a specific time, with the accumulation of all of them making up the piece. The drawing/carving itself is a sequence from inside to outside, three separate spaces split up by thresholds, the slack space between.

Grad Show Board

Snow Day! (?)

Our final review was supposed to be today but got postponed until Friday due to the crazy snow storm we were supposed to get. It's 4pm and still no snow. Suckers.

Miralles Reading

Yesterday, Thomas gave me some great notes on my thesis statement and asked some good questions to consider. Here's a snippet,

"...I believe part of the power and potential of your work lies beyond the resort town, and could open up new ways for architecture to consider its relationship to time. What is an architecture that can be understood in relation to the constant temporal flux that underlies it?"

I think that this is a really good question to ask and will help me broaden the scope of my work (while helping to focus it at the same time). Today I read a really good article about Enric Miralles' work with some quotes from him that seem very potent. This particular article was talking about The Igualada Cemetery project that Miralles did.

"Contemporary architectural settings are usually experienced as having their origin in singular moments of time. They evoke an experience of flattened or rejected temporality. Yet, the existential task of architecture is to relate us to time as much as to space... The mental roles of these two fundamental existential dimensions are curiously reversed. In terms of space, we yearn for specificity, whereas in our temporal experience we desire a sense of continuity. Consequently, architecture has to create a specificity of space and place, and at the same time, evoke the experience of temporal continuum." Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Space of Time. Oz. v.20 1998, pp54-57

"In temporary architectures I explore the idea of the journey. Through the journey you arrive at the idea of variations and you learn that these are as important as the final results... The end result is no more than a more defined vibration that grows our of all changes that have been between the initial project and the final construction. In its very formation, architecture incorporates the idea of the journey, of the variable." Zabalbeascoa, Anatxu: Miralles-Tiagliabue: Time Architecture. Ginko Press, USA, 1999.

New Thesis Statement

Architecture in Flux: The Ebb and Flow of Architectonic Agency

From our diurnal routines to the annual cycle of the seasons, states of flux continually shape the built world. My claim is for an architecture in tune to the ebb and flow of our lives and seasons, responding to change as we do. For example, when a human goes to sleep his/her mind is not “off” but open and active in a new and different world than when awake. Similarly, when a building “closes” for the season in a resort town, it is now open to something new. In the resort towns that I’ve been studying, many buildings go dormant for the winter months, with entire structures falling into hibernation to rest up for the next summer. This leaves an infrastructure open for the new, the possible. How can an architecture be flexible enough to fundamentally respond to change while still maintaining an identity? I’m proposing to take advantage of the dormancy of winter to create architecture that responds not only to the summer crowd of wealth and affluence, but to the needs of the year-round citizenry as well. This is not simply through a change in program and use, but a fundamental spatial and experiential shift due to the complex of external forces that shape our lives.

Drawings

I've continued to do drawings to try to express this idea of time and a cycle of change. They are abstract, but touch upon the movement from outdoors to indoors, the thresholds at each stage, and the fact that process isn't linear, but ebbs and flows with time. Also, they were fun to make and I used watercolors, something I'm not too practiced in. Here's a sample:

Modern Architecture

The reason I like modern architecture is because it's contextual. In most cases, the building responds to its surroundings to make it unique to that site and its conditions. This is why each project is different, has its own identity, and ultimately makes it exciting. Additionally, spaces in those buildings should be able to respond to changes not only throughout the year, but also diurnally. I was reading a passage about the Fukuoka Housing project by Steven Holl (1989-91) and really liked these lines:

"The 28 apartment interiors are conceptualized as "hinged space," a modern interpretation of the multi-use concept of traditional Fusuma. Diurnal hinging allows expansion of the living area during the day, reclaimed by bedrooms at night. Episodic hinging reflects change in family over time; rooms can be added or subtracted accommodating grown-up children leaving or elderly parents moving in."