DAISY AMES

For our design studio this year we are doing an urban design project in groups of two in Stamford, Connecticut. We are analyzing the current social, economic, and physical parameters of the area and making design strategies based on the direction we think the area would benefit most.  Stamford is currently a corporate financial satellite for New York City and hosts a bustling transportation corridor along the Northeastern coastline. It is a town that “works,” economically-speaking, and provides the city with what it needs to accommodate the commuting workers and other operational aspects of the city in a timely and spacious manner.  We have been given two sites to focus our attention on for the first few weeks. One site is in the downtown financial district, and one site on the water, and they are separated by a large low-income multi-family housing district and a cemetery. My partner and I have recognized that the educated workers that commute to Stamford return to New York City immediately after work and have no need stay.  An idea of ours is to establish one or both sites as a place for these workers to spend their time, and potentially view Stamford as a place that offers as good a night life or experience as New York City. Since the commuting population is generally stereotyped as the white, educated, cookie-cutter, corporate, young singles, we have made the obvious reference to Mad Men. So what we want our urban design initiatives to do is encourage these professionals to invest in Stamford, and find a way to keep them there so that Stamford becomes its own enclave of New York City. We are considering Brooklyn, “an enclave of Manhattan,” as an example in which people initially moved their for economical reasons but now have chosen to be separate and embrace the particular “inherent” style that comes along with it, given the fact that places like Williamsburg have rent prices comparable to Manhattan. Yet, Stamford, we are arguing already has its own style – a la Mad Men… and it is our challenge to create spaces and architecture that support this way of life.

Last week we had to build 1/2” scale models of an interior “room” (dare I call it such a conventional thing!) in our studio design proposal - a contemporary art museum on a pier. These were light study models showing how daylight entered the space, reflected off of walls, penetrated through the space and/or dissipated from above. We calculated the angles of reflection and the type of reflections based off of the color and surface material. We provided photographs of the daylighting effects during winter and summer solstice, and the spring/fall equinox. These images were achieved by using a cut-out “nomen” triangle on sun dial of 40 degrees positioned on the model itself.

Studio critic, Joel Sanders made an interesting point that none of the models that he was seeing re-defined contemporary art or made a statement about an artist’s curatorial motives. While we all focused on the prompt of the assignment, Joel was passionate about depicting a space that could house a variety of media. He was annoyed that the students chose Lichtenstein’s and random yarn as examples of contemporary art -things he’s already seen. He proceeded to say that artists today fight being defined by one medium, and that they are constantly mixing media either in one piece of work, or they already have a body of work that reaches across a range of media. He concluded that our spaces should reflect this shift - to make spaces that are not harmonious, but eclectic, like that of the new artist. He said these spaces should challenge the conventional way of viewing different mediums ie. video art does not always have to be in a black box, or sculpture does not have to be in an atrium… and, perhaps make a new space for some sort of medium that we aren’t even aware of yet. Oh la la.

Last year there were PhD bag-lunches in which everyone in the MED and Architecture programs were invited to a short presentation and discussion about the work of a Yale PhD student. They were great! However, sometimes the faculty (Kurt Forster, Mario Carpo and Daniel Sherer) out-numbered the student attendance, but nevertheless created a very lively discourse. This year, with the threat of these meetings being discontinued, YSOA has decided to name these discussions and cater them - huge improvement and huge incentive for others! Joseph Clark kick-started the first of the series of “DIALOGUES” in the 3rd floor conference room. The attendance spiked from last year’s 10 people to nearly 30. 

Joseph spoke about the role of proportion and the human body in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre that eventually led to the development of the Modular and the integration of the golden section as a device for design. Architecture often calls on music to help explain some phenomenological occurances, so when rhythm (metre) was introduced into the discussion, it quickly became theory-based. While Wittkower maintained that the comparisons between the Renaissance modulation and the Modular Man were completely abstract, Heidegger similarly worried that we were moving away from the traditional ways of living if we base physical manifestations on “forced” modulation from the “spoon to the city,” as Massimo Vignelli says. Emmanuel Petit commented on the systematization of the modular in relation to tempo, the spaces in between music notes on the page, as it begins to have acoustical and aural connotations. Furthermore, the ear is the governing engine behind human balance and stability, so the conversation moved from modulation in physical form to an investigation about posture and the way we carry ourselves within that physical realm. Since posture accentuates human proportions, it would seem that Corbusier’s Modular is just the same representation of accentuated naturalistic proportions. It was an amazing discussion and a glimpse into all the things architects consider when designing. 

There were some really awesome advanced studio design reviews the last few days - some of which were by friends I have followed closely, and some were projects that simply stopped me in my tracks. Over all, the diversity of the studios, breadth of work, and the discussions that ensued were really stimulating. Yesterday I popped between one uber-practical studio focused on designing a house, and another theory-based studio that debated “liquid” architecture.

One thing that amused me was all the pancake’n going on. Mmm, pancakes… stacking floor plates within a structure which inherently fights linearity. There is no doubt that form has taken precedent in architecture especially in countries that are willing to take chances with construction ie. India and China. While these projects are evocative, I sense an insensitivity to functionality. Whether it’s a hundred story office building proposal or a small museum - form dictated design. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but when I see elaborate curves and expressive structures punctured by the rhythmic and disharmonious practicality of linear walking surfaces, it leaves me a bit baffled. It makes me wonder if occupying these flashy forms was an after-thought. The projects I found most refreshing are the ones that represented the human scale critically. 

One hell of a week… but today, was pretty awesome. I woke up to take test on concrete beams, had a 30 minute break to clean my apartment and do laundry, returned to school for a three hour class on glass detailing, had a team meeting about building a house this summer, went for a six mile run, and then returned for a two hour symposium with Kevin Roche and Christopher Hawthorne. (funny quotes to come)

Those were all the things that I had planned and expected myself to do during the day. But, what came after was unexpected. I went to the usual post-lecture cocktail in the exhibition space and ran into my TA from last semester with a cluster of other students. For the next hour and a half we were completely engrossed in conversation about archi-politics, which led to dinner at a local sushi joint. What I loved about this evening, is that we were constantly talking about ways to improve our environment, whether through Yale specifically, or through our own stance on design. One fellow student has started a company based on potluck style dining experience for graduate students.  Students essentially create a community by sharing ideas over cooking and eating while enrolled in various graduate fields of study. Another student argued the value of free hand drawing and the increased failure to produce being a purely technologically dependent artist… ie the writer who can’t write without a computer… which is a bizarre realization. Another student criticized the “game-playing” politics involved in the critic-practitioner relationship.

While we were all passionate and sometimes upset about certain aspects of our “profession,” we all more or less spoke with an undertone that we care. We, as designers, care about the way people live their lives. We care that people get together, that they produce, and that they have integrity. I really can’t think of something I’d rather be doing than reinforcing those ideals. And, I truly believe design/ architecture is able to do that. 

To send my message home… after dinner, it was no question that we grab coffee on our way back to studio. There is nothing more than doing that can get you to where you want to be and what you want to accomplish. It was that moment when we all returned to school at 11:30pm on a Friday night, that I realized I was happiest. And now at 2am, I am still am excited about what I am doing and working towards.

“Analysis allows us to have “holy shit” moments… to realize something we cannot see and to be able to go somewhere with it.” 

- Peter Eisenman during third year studio critique September 17th, 2010

“So, this is my favorite class. It’s not going to be yours… but that is why it’s mine. I’m not here to make you happy. There are plenty of things to spend $50,000 on to make you happy.”

He’s a straight shooter and I like that… a lot. 

“This absolute pre-cendence and pre-dominance of the transcendental as content of the signified as “narrated” by the signifier, has as consequence for the Middle Age a profound, radical devaluation of the significance of the empirical experience and, with that, of the reality of the physical world.” 

- Guido Zuliani “On the Origins of the Conceptual Difference in Architecture”

what.