Totalizing sphere of tech & potential for co-working spaces…

Pier Vittorio Aureli asked everyone to rewrite their studio brief in order to tackle certain areas of interest. My partner, Wanli Mo and I are interested in the following… 

In a world where work has become a totalizing sphere, the condition is especially self-evident in immaterial production. Contemporary creative workers are available for working twenty-four hours, seven days a week. However, contrary to their long working schedules is their “willingness” to accept any form of exploitation. In terms of housing, while creative workers are favored by capitalism as agents of gentrification, they usually find themselves unable to afford living and working in the gentrified areas.

With the emergence of immaterial production into a hegemonic position which used to be held by the industry, revisiting the concept of the common has never become so relevant as today. As Michael Hardt suggests, with the rise of immaterial production, there will be an inevitable tendency toward the shared over the exclusive, as the logic of scarcity does not hold in the domain of immaterial production. If the house is a place where life in the form of labor potential is harnessed and political subjectivity is constructed, then can a new form of housing bring out the latent potential toward the common?

Tech hangouts welcome at Ace Hotel. Image by Douglas Lyle Thompson

Among creative workers, we are particularly interested in providing living and working space for artists – painters, sculptures, musicians and etc. As different modes of art productions require different spaces and certain degrees of isolation, it provides the possibility for a series of subtle and transitional interventions that each is operated on at a small-scale. Instead of appropriating large industrial space as what happened in the past twenty years to gentrify the declined industrial areas, we’re interested in recycling the “ruins” of suburban city. While in New York City it is no longer possible for artists to find an affordable living and working space due to the over-gentrification, its twin city – Newark – becomes the perfect testing ground for the new approach. The fragmented urban condition of Newark is not only able to provide a series of spaces for artists to live and work, but also allows these scattered spaces to become points of differentiation and influence in the sea of homogeneous suburban houses.

Snapshot of the crazy underbelly of my studio project right now…

by Daisy Ames

Today we submitted a proposal for Persepcta 49: Reflection…

Jennifer Dempsey, Nicholas Hunt and I submitted a proposal to be editors for Perspecta 49, due to launch in Fall 2016. Perspecta is The Yale Architectural Journal, the oldest student-edited architectural journal in the United States. It is “internationally respected for its contributions to contemporary architectural discourse with original presentations of new projects as well as historical and theoretical essays.” Below is only the Statement of Purpose portion of the proposal… enjoy!

Perspecta 49 proposes that the concept of reflection is a far more complex topic than that of a mirror image. In language, reflection connotes the act of contemplation, often the process in which we draw from our past. It describes an intellectual action that amplifies a line of thinking. In physics, reflection is the interference between two different media, which causes an abrupt change in direction of a wave (light, sound, etc.). The behavior of reflection allows us to perceive an image through light. In mass culture, our desires are reflected as a semblance of a collective identity. Here, reflection becomes an unconscious phenomenon of our shared experience.

Reflection raises issues that are philosophically rich, technologically relevant and culturally significant, rendering it a fertile lens through which to contemplate architecture. Perspecta 49 will bring together various accounts of reflection to consider the ways this prolific term influences the disciplines of art, architecture and culture.

French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan identifies the significance of reflection in the formation of individual consciousness in his work, The Mirror Stage. The Mirror Stage describes the formation of the ego in an infant when it encounters its image in a mirror for the first time. The child’s identification with the mirror image establishes a conception of the subject (self) in relation to the object (external world).1 The system of consciousness identified in The Mirror Stage is elaborated into three realms in Lacan’s larger body of work: the Imaginary, the Real and the Symbolic. These orders will provide three themes in which to ground the discussion of reflection.

Above Image - Architect, Francois Roche, curates the single circulating image of himself which is a photoshopped combination of him and his wife. The image of his firm, ideas of identity, and ‘architecture as entity’ are seen in his hypersensitivity towards copyright, and his concern with public perception.

Images at Top: A baby and its reflection. La Reproduction Interdite by René Magritte.

(post by Daisy Ames)

A history of Newark, NJ - learned through map making…

For the first half of our design studio with Pier Vittorio Aureli this semester at Yale School of Architecture, we were broken up into three research groups in order to gain a better understanding of the topic of designing housing for the creative class in Newark, New Jersey. This also facilitated a studio-wide discussion, fostering the creation of knowledge-based theses about our design intentions. The three topics we were divided into: Labor, Housing, and Newark, resulted in concise presentations, and required the development of succinct ideas on how each topic relates the problem we are addressing. It has been incredibly educational to hear the history of labor as it relates to traditions of productivity and idealized working environments, especially in light of Marissa Mayer’s recent request for Yahoo employees to stop working from home and return to the office. Additionally, the housing group has provided numerous precedents for understanding spatial conditions and government initiatives which affect the living condition standards which are ever-changing.

1666 Settlement  of Newark                  1950 Settlement of Newark

I am very fortunate to have been assigned to researching Newark because I was able to learn about a city that I have passed through many times, but knew very little about. In addition, map-making became a very effective way of conveying an idea about its tendencies, latent aspirations and infrastructural impositions. The process of map-making became a voice for my group to establish precise ideas and critically understand the best way of portraying these ideas. We made nearly fifty iterations of maps based on a range of sources which include satellite views of the Northeast, historical maps of New Jersey, and simply the topographic and natural landscape in which Newark was settled. It has been incredible to see the transformation in representation and how effective each stage has been in our understanding. The Newark group, which included partners, Stephanie Lee and RJ Tripodi, ended up only using about five of the maps created in our mid-review presentation today.

1666 Tendency of Newark                  1950 Tendency of Newark

The white maps above point out the 1666 settlement in relation to the water which supported the agrarian and theocratic society it was aiming to establish. But by the mid 20th century, the post-industrial society had gone through a number of transformations to support the once booming economy, and the transportation and manufacturing hub it became. 

The black maps above show the inherent tendency to develop a city grid which was lost by the mid 20th century because of the fragmentation made part by infrastructure which was constructed to help people pass through, but ended up leaving the city heavily divided. 

PS. I will post about the discussion after our review at some point soon.

Last semester with Eisenman / This semester with Aureli

Last semester my advanced design studio at Yale School of Architecture was a combination of what I call awful-awesomeness … which I love. Architecture requires that constant physical and mental rigor, so much so that when a benchmark is met, it is extra exhilarating.   Peter Eisenman’s studio is infamously known to be grueling, no matter one’s level of knowledge or proficiency with the material.  The amount and quality of work that was demanded of us and produced still amazes me. I am not just referring to my partner Tegan Bukowski and myself, but my eight other studio-mates too! We made hundreds of models, sketches, diagrams and iterations of all these things, and had highly productive presentations, conversations, and yes, arguments along the way.

This semester I have proven that I just can’t get enough of that awful-awesomeness… or something.  My advanced design studio for Spring 2013 is led by Pier Vittoiro Aureli, Italian architect and educator.  He directed the PhD program at the Berlage Institute, and is now a Diploma Unit Master at the Architectural Association in London. He also has his own practice called Dogma. Thoroughly interested in the philosophical underpinnings and socio-cultural initiatives of a place, Aureli has us researching instead of what he might call “the meaningless work of producing for the sake of producing” ie physical models which lack intellectual intent. We are reading book after book in order to develop a critical idea about the project before we think about the architectural form. This is helping us establish a strong theoretical framework from which we develop a thesis about our design intent; one supported by historical evidence, cultural surveys and formal analysis. I am already enjoying this process and way of approaching a project thus far. 

When you think you are not in a moment of crisis is, in fact, when you are in a crisis - because there is nothing to do!

—  Emmanuel Petit, Professor at Yale School of Architecture

Dusk in Vienna to visit a long time favorite, the Postal Savings Bank, by Otto Wagner… (at Vienna, Austria)

This is what Le Corbusier’s Palace of Assembly in Chandigarh, India looks like today, January 3rd, 2012! (at Chandigarh) photo by @daisyames

I just updated my design portfolio website via Cargo.

http://cargocollective.com/daisyames 

our design process thus far - developing the diagram…

For our studio design project, my partner Tegan Bukowski and I are taking a Lacanian approach to our intervention on the site in Como, Italy. Since our site is opposite the Casa def Fascio, mirrored about the central axis of the Duomo, we have derived a diagram which is a result of a number of operations performed on the axis itself. We are overlaying two series of diagrams, one which places the CDF at the center of a Lacanian 3 x 3 grid and one which places the CDF and at the corner of a Lacanian 3x3 grid. When reflected into the “virtual” realm, both of these 3x3 grids become Derridian 2x2 grids. (See series diagrams below)

The 3x3 grid with the CDF at the center leaves a trace of the center void, representing its void in the real, and the 3x3 grid with the CDF at the corner leaves traces of the towers implied in real realm but never realized in Terragni’s actual design for the CDF. The left diagram below is the final overlay of these two diagrams, which we are using as our “framework” for design. The right diagram below is our current site plan, which shows the ‘virtual’ mirrored part taking on subterranean qualities and the ‘real’ producing above-ground building masses (red fill).

For more about Peter Eisenman’s advanced studio this year, see other posts:

creating a narrative to our design process… 17 Oct 2012

using psychoanalysis to help develop our studio project… 11 Sept 2012

the challenge of curating your education… 7 Sept 2012

Today’s diagrammatic model for tomorrow’s pinup… for a mid-review for Peter Eisenman’s advanced studio at Yale School of Architecture.

parametric modeling may be killing the diagram, but let’s not talk about it and focus on using it correctly… or something…

Last Friday, the Yale School of Architecture hosted a small symposium about architecture which included a handful of faculty, theoreticians, designers, historians, visiting practitioners and a dozen or so students. The discussion was called “Digital Design Theory,” and addressed the transformations in form-making that took place between the Post-Modern, Modern and Post-Modern movements, and their subsequent academic implications. With the advent of new digital technology which defers to computer scripts and algorithms in order to produce form, the theoretical component and design process has drastically changed.

Oceanic Pavilion by Emergent and Kokkugia for Yeosu 2012 Expo

A particularly interesting moment in the discussion arose when Roland Snooks of Kokkugia Architects (above) described the current shift away from the linear process of design which has been taught in schools for the last 50 years. The systematic approach to designing requires students to describe their inspirations and justify their design moves through a sequence of diagrams. Instead, today’s digital processes (ie algorithms and scripts) leave little room for this process to be articulated in a coherent way because we are using a different language all together, that of the computer’s, as Emmanuel Petit stated. Thus, the diagram as a descriptive tool and key element in describing a process is becoming obsolete.

House II Diagrams, Eisenman Architects

In his recent book, The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Mario Carpo refers to the practice’s transformation as “a digital turn;” a turn towards an architecture without an author. Thus, the author’s struggle of working through the rigor of a diagram to produce a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional form is at fundamental stake. We are no longer exercising philosophical underpinnings or contextual knowledge to justify design moves. Instead, what is produced are striking and stylized renderings of buildings that mask an absence of intellectual rigor with seemingly complex representational techniques. Though there are dangers inherent in this method of design, what contemporary designers may gain by this way of practicing architecture is the opportunity and new challenges of undoing the way we have traditionally been “taught” to design, not only through the inherently complex computation processes, but by re-imagining our built environment in the first place.

Speaker Main Points:

Emmanuel Petit (Yale SOA and Harvard GSD) proposed that parametric modeling is apart of post-humanistic theory which gives the computer the responsibility to pick the next generation, but falls victim to “theoretical laziness,” in which “humans are expelled from the table” because we are not doing the selection ourselves.

Ingeborg Rocker (Harvard GSD) spoke about parametric modeling as simply an exploration of aesthetics which emerged from cybernetics from the 50’s and 60’s. She concludes by saying that parametric modeling is blurring the line between subject and object because they are no longer mutually exclusive but interrelated in their representation. It is this interrelationship that produces complexity in high tech design, but she says that complexity is not a subject, that it is only a by-product. Thus, we must strive for more than complexity - that complexity in digital modeling cannot be a mask for non-complex design theory. 

Ingeborg’s practice- http://rocker-lange.com/

Michael Young (Yale SOA) pointed out the hidden tie between the parametric and the phenomenological - that Patrik Schumacher describes his projects essentially the same way as Christian Norberg-Schulz describes his projects but uses words that refer to computation rather than material and light.

Michael’s practice - http://www.young-ayata.com/michael_young.html

Mark Gage (Yale SOA) said that we handle the discussion around parametric modeling like Brad Pitt in Fight Club: “Rule number one, we do not talk about Fight Club. Rule number two, we do not talk about Fight Club” “So, let’s use parametrics, but stop fucking talking about it.”

Mark’s practice - http://gageclemenceau.com/home/

last week’s pinup: creating a narrative to our design process…

Last week, my partner, Tegan Bukowski, and I presented diagrams and diagrammatic models for our design project, a civic center in Como, Italy. Our site is opposite Terragni’s Casa del Fascio, which is mirrored upon the axis of the Duomo. First, we investigated all the possibilities of the mirror, and what being a mirror means. Initially we focused on physical operations ie magnification, shift, skew, and of course, reflection. Then we began to take a philosophical stance about the function of a mirror based on Lacan’s writing on The Mirror Stage, which occurs during a baby’s first few months of life, when an idea of self image, ego and truth, among other things are developed.

 

We came back to the Architecture Venice Biennale during our studio travel week to Milan to see our final Piranesi model on exhibition. It’s looking awesome! There were tons of photographers snapping away at the model and drawings. So fun to see all the excitement around our work. (Taken with Instagram at Central Pavillion @ La Biennale)

One of my favorite pictures thus far, the Duomo in Milan, Italy… on a misty afternoon. (Taken with Instagram at Duomo di Milano)