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sell the permanent collection. roshelle born | m. arch graduate student thesis
/
pg 0 Art:
Art investigates the objective truth. Art explores the essential nature of reality. Art embraces a deep aesthetic culture that values truth and beauty. Art is a catalyst. Art is restricted by the infrastructures that guarantee its circulation and display.
Let’s hijack this party.
/
pg 2 Art in the 21st century: Just as monumental train stations were built as heroic last efforts to resuscitate an antiquated idea, an edific complex has captured the spirit of the art world despite a diconnect between these icons and the needs of artists and the public at large. We have come to accept a broken throughline between artists, curators and the public as the paradigm for the display of art. The world insists upon conflict. Curators, in response to the Bilbao Effect, are demanding global, iconic museums. Contemporary artists desire large warehouse formats, former factory spaces, and purely utilitarian structures. Ever-changing urban environments need infrastructures that can respond to evolving
needs. There is positive potential in conflict. It is the responsibiliy of designers not to compromise, but to incorporate and integrate differenes, culminating in an inclusive whole that is greater than a sum of parts. The current recession has provided us with a unique and fleeting opportunity to pause, step back from pure production, and take a critical look at the infrastructures of which we are a part. Realizing a critical juncture, we must reimagine the possibility of how we experience art critically in the 21st century.
Sell the permanent collection. Its time for something new.
/
pg 4 Defining the experience: As architects, designers, and artists, it is our responsibility to ensure that our cities don’t force us to merely adapt outdated leftovers from the past, but to reimagine the possibility of new environments. To design the museum “of the future” is senseless. “Of the future” quickly becomes anachronistic. Instead, it is about designing a lexicon, a script from which a multiplicity of critical interventions can unfold.
The Meta.
/
pg 6 Ephemerality: Parallel to the shift away from a sense of self dependent upon a stable physical place to a sense of self cultivated through a multiplicity of experience, art, as a virtual place, is no longer characterized by rootedness but by responsiveness and interconnectivity. This shift calls for an infrastructure that supports an alteration of stillness and motion, stability and change, place and space. In its inclusiveness, art is better suited to the constantly morphing, impermanent, and aesthetically driven needs and desires of modern society than the finite, permanent, and utilitarian tradition of architecture. This calls for an open and flexible system that is responsive
to both the needs of societyand the needs of the environment, which encompasses an ecological, systems-based, and socially responsible intervention.
Don’t get caught on your heels, or mine.
/
pg 8 Engage your audience: There is a deep-seated sense that the grounds for art are shifting beyond the territory ordinarily prescribed for art, likely for reasons more pragmatic than romantic. Historically, especially during periods of economic recession, similar moves have been made by artists. In the past, attempts were made to initiate dialogue with easily distributed mediums such as photography and video, as well as through un-distributable ones, such as happenings or earthworks. The former attempted to engage the popular culture, while the latter sought to exclude it; though both sought to reveal the hidden agendas of popular media. Today, however, the nature of popular media is participatory, shifting the focus from the “reveal” to engagement.
Art is by necessity a response to a highly specific set of individual, temporal, spatial and theoretical cues. The honesty of the response strengthens the possibility for engagement, and by extension for the work to serve as a catalyst in the urban environment and as a model for future critical engagements and interventions.
Hit the streets.
/
pg 10 The interdisciplinarian: Encouraging the intersection of thought and use of any media lets go of determinist ideas of the finite, the permanent, and the utilitarian and is suggestive of artifacts and environments that are constantly adapting. This is not architecture.
Escape labels.
/
pg 12 Self-serving prophecies: What do I want to know? What is going to help me continue to grow personally and professinoally? Be curious, study and explore. People are most productive and interesting when they are happy with what they are doing.
There is an “I” in thesis.
/
pg 14 The Fantastical:
And so the story begins...
/
pg 16 Artscientisturbanpoetect A rapper walks down the street, passing a neglected lot, a dead space in the life of the street. Seizing positive opportunity, she feels in her pocket for the meson, graps its smooth pill-form, and skips it over the chain-link fence surrounding the litter and overgrowth. The meson, a sub-atomic particle that senses the electro-magnetic field of the environment, uses its inherent intelligence to grow around the existing frameworks of the lot. A beautiful, open, and flexible architecture without walls emerges. People are drawn to the site, inspired to further the dialogue with their own works of visual art, music, performance, and spectacle. Locals
who have never experienced anything like it, are inspired by the art. Outsiders, unfamiliar with the vacant lot, are inspired by the selfdetermination of the neighborhood. The intervention runs its course, and over time the sun and rain begin to break down the material, returning the site back to its original form, but forever altering its trajectory. The latent energy of the site is activated.
with the fantastical
/
pg 18 The proposal: The work responds to the environment, indistinguishable from its context, yet it is an autonomous form. An artwork based in theoretical science. There are multiple, simple, elegant, beautiful interventions backed by a rich and complex script. The discussion is about the meta-narrative, the structure of the interventions, and the commonalities of intent. It is about addressing problematic paradigms in urban environments and creating new, sustainable, ecological, systemsbased, and socially responsible interventions. It is about inclusive design that incorporates and integrates, constantly critiqueing itself.
Each intervention has the potential to produce an urban ripple effect. The long term value is not in the intervention itself, but in the dialogue it engenders with a dynamic conception of infrastructure, not rooted in time or place, but in ideas and experiences. The intervention responds and challenges, while the dialogue endures. In its role as an investigation of the objective truth, exploration of reality, embrace of deep aesthetic culture and as a catalyst, the intervention is art in ways that architecture has never been before: an object able to stand alone and whose meaning or purpose is open to infinite interpretation.
sculpted by the meta-narrative
/
pg 20 The concrete:
galvanized by research
/
pg 22 Gilles Deleuze: the role of ‘other thinkers’ “The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It has played the repressors role: how can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant and Heidegger, and so-and-so’s book about them? A formidable school of intimidation which manufactures specialists in thought - but which also makes those who stay outside conform all the more to this specialism which they despise. An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.” (Dialogues, 1977. p 13) Like philosophy, the knowledge, ‘true’ experience and ‘understanding’ of art is thought to be held by the elite few, the art historian, the
curator, the artist, and in this sense keeps art at a distance from the masses, conform under the pretense “I just don’t get it.” For Deleuze, understanding the history of philosophy embraces a much more open, active, constructive sense. Each reading of a philosopher, an artist, a writer should be undertaken, Deleuze tells us, in order to provide an impetus for creating new concepts that do not pre-exist (Differene and Repetition, 1968 pg vii). In the true Deluezen sense, one can use his critique to challenge established ideas in the field of art to incorporate those who are ‘outside’. “What we should in fact do, is stop allowing philosophers to reflect ‘on’ things. The philosopher creates, he doesn’t reflect(Negotiations, pg
122)…..The history of philosophy isn’t a particularly reflective discipline. It’s rather like portraiture in painting. Producing mental, conceptual portraits. As in painting, you have to create a likeness, but in a different material: the likeness is something you have to produce, rather than a way of reproducing anything (which comes down to just repeating what a philosopher says).” (Negotiations, pg136) Not only is art held at a distance from the masses, but it is filtered down through the lenses of the elite. What would someone on the outside of the “formidable school of intimidation which manufactures thought” bring to a discussion about an artist such as Olafur Eliasson, if they felt they were in the position to ‘understand’ it.
Thus the works that Deleuze studies are seen by him as inspirational, but also as a resource, from which the philosopher can gather the concepts that seem the most useful and give them a new life, along with the force to develop new, nonpreexistent concepts. In an important sense, Deleuze’s whole modus operandi is based in this revaluation of the role of other thinkers, and the means by which one can use them. What are the ways that ‘other thinkers’ can be put to a new service to recreate or awaken new concepts, derived from artwork of other contemporary artists, as well as throughout history?
/
pg 24 Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project Olafur Eliasson chose the subject of weather because it is one of the few fundamental encounters with nature that can still be experienced in the city; its importance shown in its ability to shape the content of most people’s small talk. In The Weather Project, Eliasson explores how museum’s mediate the reception of art, from the macro-branding level throughout the city, to micro-cues that the cultivate the experience within museum-walls. Eliasson observes a discrepancy between the experience of seeing and the knowledge of expectation. For the exhibition, he created his own cadre of marketing materials that included simple questions or statements about the weather. Eliasson also wished to explore
how the public understood the experience as a construction. In the Tate’s Turbine Hall, you were able to walk behind the sun and view the wiring, see the equipments that was producing the fine mist throughout.
/
pg 26 Alice In Wonderland: Curiouser and curiouser Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures. The fantastical tale plays with logic in ways that have given the story lasting popularity with both adults and children. It is considered to be one of the most characteristic examples of the genre of literary nonsense.
/
pg 28 Jaime Learner: Moveable Infrastructures “Lerner is a longtime proponent of what might be called “blitz urbanism”: the rapid, workable improvement that does an end run on bureaucrats and doubters” -Justin Davidson, Newsday As mayor of Curitiba, Jaime Lerner transformed a gridlocked commercial artery into a spacious pedestrian mall over a long weekend, before skeptical merchants had time to finish reading their Monday papers. Since then he’s become a hero not only to his fellow Brazilians, but also to the growing ranks of municipal planners seeking greener, more sustainable cities. He has inspired a number of
his unique solutions to urban problems, including sheltered boarding tubes to improve speed of bus transit; a garbage-for-food program allowing Curitibans to exchange bags of trash for bags of groceries; and trimming parkland grasses with herds of sheep. (From TED) His latest ventures are temporary, responsive urban infrastructures, including libraries and museums, that can be plopped down anywhere in the city, and moved as needed.
/
pg 30 Downtown Alliance: Re:Construction Re:Construction is a public art program produced by the Downtown Alliance. This initiative channels the energy of New York City’s rebuilding process by recasting construction sites as canvasses for innovative public art and architecture. Each project uses standard construction barriers to embrace the ongoing nature of Downtown’s redevelopment with original and whimsical design. The Downtown Alliance works closely with public and private developers to produce each installation. http://www.downtownny.com/reconstruction
/
pg 32 Biothing Featured in an exhibition that blurs the boundaries between art, architecture and theoretical science in Vienna entitled “Transitory Objects” are two models from Alisa Andrasek/BIOTHING. The models are a part of a design project called “Mesonic Emission” and were created using an open-source algorithm that is based on the behaviors of electro-magnetic fields allowing for scripting sophisticated enough to respond to the shape of the environment and to “grow” around obstructing objects. h t t p : / / w w w. b i o t h i n g . o r g / w i k i / d o k u . php?id=home
/
pg 34 David Edwards: Artscientist David Edwards founded Le Laboratoire, an experimental art and design center where artists and scientists collaborate in central Paris. Le Laboratoire’s experiments are backed up by public meetings between artists and scientists. These evening events, known as Synapses, offer debates, discussions and sometimes experiments with the public, on themes specifically connected with Le Laboratoire’s current activities.
/
pg 36 B.I.G.: Yes is More B.I.G.’s mission is to find a way to incorporate and integrate differences, not through compromise or by choosing but by an inclusive rather than inclusive architecture. B.I.G. sees their works as “ the midwives of a continuous birth of architectural species shaped by the countless criteria of multiple interests.” Their monograph, “Yes is More” searches for a playful, comic media in which they can decribe the energy and ideas behind their work. This format arose from a visit to their office by Bruce Mau. The team showed Bruce their projects, and later, at his request, sent him information on the designs that they discussed. Bruce was perplexed by the work that was sent his way;
he saw a strong disconnect between the energy, action and intellect in the office and the dull, straightforward character of the architectural drawings. “Yes is More” is an attempt to encapsulate the intelligence and vigor behind each of B.I.G.’s projects.
/
pg 38 Tommaso Marinetti: The Italian Futurists This year we celebrate the 100th anniversay of the Futurist Manifesto, written by Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. The manifesto was precursor in cultural branding as Marinetti blanketed the front pages of papers across Europe. The Manifesto called for the demolition of museums and libraries, contempt for women and the glorification of war, “the world’s only hygiene”. It promoted “the beautiful ideas which kill” and claimed that beauty exists only in struggle. Marinetti set the template for the proliferation of manifestos to come, including shock tactics, declamation, and bulleted lists.
• • • • • • • • • •
Love of danger Energy and fearlessness Courage, audacity and revolt Aggressive action Love of speed Splendour and generosity The beauty of struggle The glory of war Scorn for women Destruction of museums and libraries
/
pg 40 Jonathan Hill: Illegal Architect
/
pg 42 Herzog + de Meuron: The Surface
/
pg 44 Alfredo Jaar: It is Difficult
/
pg 46 Practical Idealism:
explored in the almost plausible...
/
pg 48 Grounded: A specific site, Waterview Tower, has been chosen as the lens of focus with the understanding that there is the potential for a dynamic network of interventions in stalled building projects, inactive sites, and underutilized spaces thoughout Chicago, the country, and the world, each with a specific dialogue producing a multiplicity of reactions, responding to unique opportunities and within the greater critique. The site sat underutilized as a parking lot for 30 years prior to the ground-breaking on Feb 22, 2006. Waterview Tower, LLC self-financed the ground-breaking , confident that funding would come later. Credit markets froze up, and construction officially came to a halt on Jan 27,
2008. Financing may eventually come through but rumors suggest that the existing 26 floors may be converted to apartments or a parking ramp.
The future of the site is uncertain.
/
pg 50 Grounded:
/
pg 54 Grounded: Waterview Tower was designed to be the 5th tallest building in the Chicago skyline, a 90story condominium and hotel on Wacker Drive, designed by Teng & Associates Inc. The concrete building was to be clad in glass, granite and aluminum to convey a prismatic look. Inside, 233 condiminiums and penthouse residences, with an average price of $800 per square foot, sit atop the 222-unit Shangri-La hotel . Parking for guest and residents comprises floors 2-11. Floors of 11-28 were reserved for the 222-unit Shangri-La Hotel. A setback at floor 29 was designated as a rooftop garden and amenities level for guests and residents. Per one of the city’s approval conditions to include an
outdoor garden, a terrace was to spread over approximately 8,000 sq ft featuring landscaping, water elements, sun deck, and pet recreation area. Floors 30-88 held the 233 condominiums and penthouses.
retrace this.. then its ok to steal.
The Site.
/
pg 56 Grounded:
Yet to come...flr plans, etc.
Parking for guest and residents comprises floors 2-11. Floors of 11-28 were reserved for the 222-unit Shangri-La Hotel. A setback at floor 29 was designated as a rooftop garden and amenities level for guests and residents. Per one of the city’s approval conditions to include an outdoor garden, a terrace was to spread over approximately 8,000 sq ft featuring landscaping, water elements, sun deck, and pet recreation area. Floors 30-88 held the 233 condominiums and penthouses.
The Site.
/
pg 58 Scripted: Parametrics Rhino 3x Scripting...woo woo working with Tuan
/
pg 60 Video/animation Working with Bruce Mau design on a fantastical video conception of the project.
/
pg 0 Art:
Art investigates the objective truth. Art explores the essential nature of reality. Art embraces a deep aesthetic culture that values truth and beauty. Art is a catalyst. Art is restricted by the infrastructures that guarantee its circulation and display.
Let’s hijack this party.
/
pg 2 Art in the 21st century: Just as monumental train stations were built as heroic last efforts to resuscitate an antiquated idea, an edific complex has captured the spirit of the art world despite a diconnect between these icons and the needs of artists and the public at large. We have come to accept a broken throughline between artists, curators and the public as the paradigm for the display of art. The world insists upon conflict. Curators, in response to the Bilbao Effect, are demanding global, iconic museums. Contemporary artists desire large warehouse formats, former factory spaces, and purely utilitarian structures. Ever-changing urban environments need infrastructures that can respond to evolving
needs. There is positive potential in conflict. It is the responsibiliy of designers not to compromise, but to incorporate and integrate differenes, culminating in an inclusive whole that is greater than a sum of parts. The current recession has provided us with a unique and fleeting opportunity to pause, step back from pure production, and take a critical look at the infrastructures of which we are a part. Realizing a critical juncture, we must reimagine the possibility of how we experience art critically in the 21st century.
Sell the permanent collection. Its time for something new.
/
pg 4 Defining the experience: As architects, designers, and artists, it is our responsibility to ensure that our cities don’t force us to merely adapt outdated leftovers from the past, but to reimagine the possibility of new environments. To design the museum “of the future” is senseless. “Of the future” quickly becomes anachronistic. Instead, it is about designing a lexicon, a script from which a multiplicity of critical interventions can unfold.
The Meta.
/
pg 6 Ephemerality: Parallel to the shift away from a sense of self dependent upon a stable physical place to a sense of self cultivated through a multiplicity of experience, art, as a virtual place, is no longer characterized by rootedness but by responsiveness and interconnectivity. This shift calls for an infrastructure that supports an alteration of stillness and motion, stability and change, place and space. In its inclusiveness, art is better suited to the constantly morphing, impermanent, and aesthetically driven needs and desires of modern society than the finite, permanent, and utilitarian tradition of architecture. This calls for an open and flexible system that is responsive
to both the needs of societyand the needs of the environment, which encompasses an ecological, systems-based, and socially responsible intervention.
Don’t get caught on your heels, or mine.
/
pg 8 Engage your audience: There is a deep-seated sense that the grounds for art are shifting beyond the territory ordinarily prescribed for art, likely for reasons more pragmatic than romantic. Historically, especially during periods of economic recession, similar moves have been made by artists. In the past, attempts were made to initiate dialogue with easily distributed mediums such as photography and video, as well as through un-distributable ones, such as happenings or earthworks. The former attempted to engage the popular culture, while the latter sought to exclude it; though both sought to reveal the hidden agendas of popular media. Today, however, the nature of popular media is participatory, shifting the focus from the “reveal” to engagement.
Art is by necessity a response to a highly specific set of individual, temporal, spatial and theoretical cues. The honesty of the response strengthens the possibility for engagement, and by extension for the work to serve as a catalyst in the urban environment and as a model for future critical engagements and interventions.
Hit the streets.
/
pg 10 The interdisciplinarian: Encouraging the intersection of thought and use of any media lets go of determinist ideas of the finite, the permanent, and the utilitarian and is suggestive of artifacts and environments that are constantly adapting. This is not architecture.
Escape labels.
/
pg 12 Self-serving prophecies: What do I want to know? What is going to help me continue to grow personally and professinoally? Be curious, study and explore. People are most productive and interesting when they are happy with what they are doing.
There is an “I” in thesis.
/
pg 14 The Fantastical:
And so the story begins...
/
pg 16 Artscientisturbanpoetect A rapper walks down the street, passing a neglected lot, a dead space in the life of the street. Seizing positive opportunity, she feels in her pocket for the meson, graps its smooth pill-form, and skips it over the chain-link fence surrounding the litter and overgrowth. The meson, a sub-atomic particle that senses the electro-magnetic field of the environment, uses its inherent intelligence to grow around the existing frameworks of the lot. A beautiful, open, and flexible architecture without walls emerges. People are drawn to the site, inspired to further the dialogue with their own works of visual art, music, performance, and spectacle. Locals
who have never experienced anything like it, are inspired by the art. Outsiders, unfamiliar with the vacant lot, are inspired by the selfdetermination of the neighborhood. The intervention runs its course, and over time the sun and rain begin to break down the material, returning the site back to its original form, but forever altering its trajectory. The latent energy of the site is activated.
with the fantastical
/
pg 18 The proposal: The work responds to the environment, indistinguishable from its context, yet it is an autonomous form. An artwork based in theoretical science. There are multiple, simple, elegant, beautiful interventions backed by a rich and complex script. The discussion is about the meta-narrative, the structure of the interventions, and the commonalities of intent. It is about addressing problematic paradigms in urban environments and creating new, sustainable, ecological, systemsbased, and socially responsible interventions. It is about inclusive design that incorporates and integrates, constantly critiqueing itself.
Each intervention has the potential to produce an urban ripple effect. The long term value is not in the intervention itself, but in the dialogue it engenders with a dynamic conception of infrastructure, not rooted in time or place, but in ideas and experiences. The intervention responds and challenges, while the dialogue endures. In its role as an investigation of the objective truth, exploration of reality, embrace of deep aesthetic culture and as a catalyst, the intervention is art in ways that architecture has never been before: an object able to stand alone and whose meaning or purpose is open to infinite interpretation.
sculpted by the meta-narrative
/
pg 20 The concrete:
galvanized by research
/
pg 22 Gilles Deleuze: the role of ‘other thinkers’ “The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It has played the repressors role: how can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant and Heidegger, and so-and-so’s book about them? A formidable school of intimidation which manufactures specialists in thought - but which also makes those who stay outside conform all the more to this specialism which they despise. An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.” (Dialogues, 1977. p 13) Like philosophy, the knowledge, ‘true’ experience and ‘understanding’ of art is thought to be held by the elite few, the art historian, the
curator, the artist, and in this sense keeps art at a distance from the masses, conform under the pretense “I just don’t get it.” For Deleuze, understanding the history of philosophy embraces a much more open, active, constructive sense. Each reading of a philosopher, an artist, a writer should be undertaken, Deleuze tells us, in order to provide an impetus for creating new concepts that do not pre-exist (Differene and Repetition, 1968 pg vii). In the true Deluezen sense, one can use his critique to challenge established ideas in the field of art to incorporate those who are ‘outside’. “What we should in fact do, is stop allowing philosophers to reflect ‘on’ things. The philosopher creates, he doesn’t reflect(Negotiations, pg
122)…..The history of philosophy isn’t a particularly reflective discipline. It’s rather like portraiture in painting. Producing mental, conceptual portraits. As in painting, you have to create a likeness, but in a different material: the likeness is something you have to produce, rather than a way of reproducing anything (which comes down to just repeating what a philosopher says).” (Negotiations, pg136) Not only is art held at a distance from the masses, but it is filtered down through the lenses of the elite. What would someone on the outside of the “formidable school of intimidation which manufactures thought” bring to a discussion about an artist such as Olafur Eliasson, if they felt they were in the position to ‘understand’ it.
Thus the works that Deleuze studies are seen by him as inspirational, but also as a resource, from which the philosopher can gather the concepts that seem the most useful and give them a new life, along with the force to develop new, nonpreexistent concepts. In an important sense, Deleuze’s whole modus operandi is based in this revaluation of the role of other thinkers, and the means by which one can use them. What are the ways that ‘other thinkers’ can be put to a new service to recreate or awaken new concepts, derived from artwork of other contemporary artists, as well as throughout history?
/
pg 24 Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project Olafur Eliasson chose the subject of weather because it is one of the few fundamental encounters with nature that can still be experienced in the city; its importance shown in its ability to shape the content of most people’s small talk. In The Weather Project, Eliasson explores how museum’s mediate the reception of art, from the macro-branding level throughout the city, to micro-cues that the cultivate the experience within museum-walls. Eliasson observes a discrepancy between the experience of seeing and the knowledge of expectation. For the exhibition, he created his own cadre of marketing materials that included simple questions or statements about the weather. Eliasson also wished to explore
how the public understood the experience as a construction. In the Tate’s Turbine Hall, you were able to walk behind the sun and view the wiring, see the equipments that was producing the fine mist throughout.
/
pg 26 Alice In Wonderland: Curiouser and curiouser Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures. The fantastical tale plays with logic in ways that have given the story lasting popularity with both adults and children. It is considered to be one of the most characteristic examples of the genre of literary nonsense.
/
pg 28 Jaime Learner: Moveable Infrastructures “Lerner is a longtime proponent of what might be called “blitz urbanism”: the rapid, workable improvement that does an end run on bureaucrats and doubters” -Justin Davidson, Newsday As mayor of Curitiba, Jaime Lerner transformed a gridlocked commercial artery into a spacious pedestrian mall over a long weekend, before skeptical merchants had time to finish reading their Monday papers. Since then he’s become a hero not only to his fellow Brazilians, but also to the growing ranks of municipal planners seeking greener, more sustainable cities. He has inspired a number of
his unique solutions to urban problems, including sheltered boarding tubes to improve speed of bus transit; a garbage-for-food program allowing Curitibans to exchange bags of trash for bags of groceries; and trimming parkland grasses with herds of sheep. (From TED) His latest ventures are temporary, responsive urban infrastructures, including libraries and museums, that can be plopped down anywhere in the city, and moved as needed.
/
pg 30 Downtown Alliance: Re:Construction Re:Construction is a public art program produced by the Downtown Alliance. This initiative channels the energy of New York City’s rebuilding process by recasting construction sites as canvasses for innovative public art and architecture. Each project uses standard construction barriers to embrace the ongoing nature of Downtown’s redevelopment with original and whimsical design. The Downtown Alliance works closely with public and private developers to produce each installation. http://www.downtownny.com/reconstruction
/
pg 32 Biothing Featured in an exhibition that blurs the boundaries between art, architecture and theoretical science in Vienna entitled “Transitory Objects” are two models from Alisa Andrasek/BIOTHING. The models are a part of a design project called “Mesonic Emission” and were created using an open-source algorithm that is based on the behaviors of electro-magnetic fields allowing for scripting sophisticated enough to respond to the shape of the environment and to “grow” around obstructing objects. h t t p : / / w w w. b i o t h i n g . o r g / w i k i / d o k u . php?id=home
/
pg 34 David Edwards: Artscientist David Edwards founded Le Laboratoire, an experimental art and design center where artists and scientists collaborate in central Paris. Le Laboratoire’s experiments are backed up by public meetings between artists and scientists. These evening events, known as Synapses, offer debates, discussions and sometimes experiments with the public, on themes specifically connected with Le Laboratoire’s current activities.
/
pg 36 B.I.G.: Yes is More B.I.G.’s mission is to find a way to incorporate and integrate differences, not through compromise or by choosing but by an inclusive rather than inclusive architecture. B.I.G. sees their works as “ the midwives of a continuous birth of architectural species shaped by the countless criteria of multiple interests.” Their monograph, “Yes is More” searches for a playful, comic media in which they can decribe the energy and ideas behind their work. This format arose from a visit to their office by Bruce Mau. The team showed Bruce their projects, and later, at his request, sent him information on the designs that they discussed. Bruce was perplexed by the work that was sent his way;
he saw a strong disconnect between the energy, action and intellect in the office and the dull, straightforward character of the architectural drawings. “Yes is More” is an attempt to encapsulate the intelligence and vigor behind each of B.I.G.’s projects.
/
pg 38 Tommaso Marinetti: The Italian Futurists This year we celebrate the 100th anniversay of the Futurist Manifesto, written by Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. The manifesto was precursor in cultural branding as Marinetti blanketed the front pages of papers across Europe. The Manifesto called for the demolition of museums and libraries, contempt for women and the glorification of war, “the world’s only hygiene”. It promoted “the beautiful ideas which kill” and claimed that beauty exists only in struggle. Marinetti set the template for the proliferation of manifestos to come, including shock tactics, declamation, and bulleted lists.
• • • • • • • • • •
Love of danger Energy and fearlessness Courage, audacity and revolt Aggressive action Love of speed Splendour and generosity The beauty of struggle The glory of war Scorn for women Destruction of museums and libraries
/
pg 40 Jonathan Hill: Illegal Architect
/
pg 42 Herzog + de Meuron: The Surface
/
pg 44 Alfredo Jaar: It is Difficult
/
pg 46 Practical Idealism:
explored in the almost plausible...
/
pg 48 Grounded: A specific site, Waterview Tower, has been chosen as the lens of focus with the understanding that there is the potential for a dynamic network of interventions in stalled building projects, inactive sites, and underutilized spaces thoughout Chicago, the country, and the world, each with a specific dialogue producing a multiplicity of reactions, responding to unique opportunities and within the greater critique. The site sat underutilized as a parking lot for 30 years prior to the ground-breaking on Feb 22, 2006. Waterview Tower, LLC self-financed the ground-breaking , confident that funding would come later. Credit markets froze up, and construction officially came to a halt on Jan 27,
2008. Financing may eventually come through but rumors suggest that the existing 26 floors may be converted to apartments or a parking ramp.
The future of the site is uncertain.
/
pg 50 Grounded:
/
pg 54 Grounded: Waterview Tower was designed to be the 5th tallest building in the Chicago skyline, a 90story condominium and hotel on Wacker Drive, designed by Teng & Associates Inc. The concrete building was to be clad in glass, granite and aluminum to convey a prismatic look. Inside, 233 condiminiums and penthouse residences, with an average price of $800 per square foot, sit atop the 222-unit Shangri-La hotel . Parking for guest and residents comprises floors 2-11. Floors of 11-28 were reserved for the 222-unit Shangri-La Hotel. A setback at floor 29 was designated as a rooftop garden and amenities level for guests and residents. Per one of the city’s approval conditions to include an
outdoor garden, a terrace was to spread over approximately 8,000 sq ft featuring landscaping, water elements, sun deck, and pet recreation area. Floors 30-88 held the 233 condominiums and penthouses.
retrace this.. then its ok to steal.
The Site.
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pg 56 Grounded:
Yet to come...flr plans, etc.
Parking for guest and residents comprises floors 2-11. Floors of 11-28 were reserved for the 222-unit Shangri-La Hotel. A setback at floor 29 was designated as a rooftop garden and amenities level for guests and residents. Per one of the city’s approval conditions to include an outdoor garden, a terrace was to spread over approximately 8,000 sq ft featuring landscaping, water elements, sun deck, and pet recreation area. Floors 30-88 held the 233 condominiums and penthouses.
The Site.
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pg 58 Scripted: Parametrics Rhino 3x Scripting...woo woo working with Tuan
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pg 60 Video/animation Working with Bruce Mau design on a fantastical video conception of the project.
