In the beginning...

So the first ideas were to build a tower. a capsule of sorts that would house all the program with circulation winding through it. this has found its way to a new version. This version is that the courtyard I have chosen for my site is the capsule, and all the program fits within it. That gave way to the three theaters "floating" in space with all the support for them sub-terrainian. As Parent pointed out, the ground plain is the datum with "life" above it and "life support" under it.

the tower idea

Objects within the courtyard

Here's where I am now. three theaters seemingly placed in an arbitrary manner but all connected underground. Also, too, these shapes would be rounder more like an egg, great for a theater inside but I was thinking of the way they would touch people. It seems I have fallen into a few of my own definitions of tangible and intangible.



more thought...

I left off last time on my thought with the idea of visual escape. I feel though I need to put a definition to tangible and intangible (and, yes, as complex as it may seem at first I have figured out this spell check thing...). I have defined, for myself, tangible as this; horizontal and vertical lines or planes and their intersections, as well as, nature and all the laws of physics which bind them. Obviously intangible is the antitheses of tangible. An example: say you have a mass 20 feet above your head, the span is, say, 60 feet. What you would expect to find is columns holding it up. A weight supported by something; the laws of physics are satisfied. What if those columns were taken out? Perhaps this mass is cantilevered, we don't know. All we know is that we should be, at the moment, less than an inch thick. We can not readily discern what is holding up the mass. Intangibility, the laws of physics are not readily satisfied.

site collage

This exercise was meant to tease out the subconscious and begin to reflect the site in a way we saw it, not necessarily the way we wanted to see it.

This was made up of multiple pictures of the site itself, cut up and arranged in a manner to express, abstractly, what the site was about. My intention was to capture how the ground is penetrated with buildings, trees and drains. what ended up coming out was an expression of verticality. I began to see this project as my own cubist painting.

studying the map

so I have been analysing the site through the form of a "drawdel" (a model and drawing in one). what interests me the most though is the ground plane thought of as a datum. the ground, to me, has become nothing more than a line in the sand. things pass through the barrier and dwell beneath but all forms collect around it. pipes under; buildings they supply, between or above.

the site

So we have the map, and we must treat it as though it were a painting where all the rules and laws of physics may not apply. I should look at the world as though it were an abstract painting...

as I sat in Landscape Architecture today I couldn't help but realize the topic was very close to the topic I want to focus on; paths, or what moves us.

I was immediately drawn to the "hole in the canvas" at the library where I began to see Harvard or rather the ground-plain of Harvard as more of a porous thing like fabric that everything either sat on or, in the case of the library, below.

I have three objects i want to concentrate on here: the buildings and their inter-play with the ground plain, the ground plain itself and how it has been treated as though it were a fabric, and, finally, the paths. these I feel are rather important; leading us to prominent intersections where we can see certain views or buildings, give us place markers or just change our direction. these paths are the most important for me right now and will be what I will most work on.

a thought...

After watching the movie Inception I am left with the notion of tangability. what we percieve as sensory true may not be. I have the desire to look deeply into the tangable as well as the intangable as we move into designing a building. I suppose one might say I have my own agenda. These ideas are rough, but I would like to at least express them.

If Corbusier thought of right angles as organizing elements and curves as elements that would touch the human body, I feel I can use these ideas in my own quest. Right angles to me are tangable. These are what we use to understand our world. What, then, of curves? curves in a building are the intangable. these "touch" the sense of sight and invoke an emotion...

I feel I might be going to quickly. Rewind, about a year or so. I realize the spaces I have felt compelled to leave between buildings has been an attempt at touching what we call our souls. An example:

Space between buildings stirs an emotion.
The space here is harsh. Cold concrete seems to be abrasive. The space hear could be said to be bourdering on the intangable to the common person, as there is not much here to fix our known world on. However, there are two elements to soften the entire ensamble. The stream down the center leading off to the horizon makes the observer say, "I'm o.k. with this." The need to have a visual escape is ever important here. Also there is a need to be able to touch an element which is not man-made, aka water in this case. It could be wood, or stone, or any other item that lets us see true nature.

Here I must pause; I have other work that requires my attention...

the machines for seeing

These are machines for seeing. Sometimes in order to see something new all you need are new eyes... You can look at the same thing, and yet see something entirely different. Anyway, these "machines" are to make the viewer see the landscape in a different way.

Machine #1:

This is just a simple box, however in trying to see the model through this machine one must adjust the mirrors within to get a glimpse through the other side. As the viewer looks in the machine, however, we get in our own way. staring back at the viewer is the viewer themselves. This reflection is my attempt at trying to show how we have the need to see ourselves in our physical manafestations in an attempt at immortality. unfortunatly this will never work... nothing we build will last forever. we just want to see ourselves while we are alive.

This machine doesn't quite get across what I had hoped as the mirrors are too blurry and the distance between them is too great. One was supposed to be able to see through their own image to the clear image of the model. Instead all you can see is yourself.

Machine #2:

Based in my extra-curricular reading of Buddhism, I have made this machine for viewing nothing. there was not much instruction to this one, just make us see nothing. As said before, all we might need is new eyes so I will leave this discription at that.

the building

So here is the landscape I came up with. This is a building imposed on a landscape which could have been prestine, as it were. As the glasses in the painting are, in a sort, an imposition on the painting I used the shape of them to reflect this in the building. The table has become the water and the different levels of which reflect the different layers in the painting the table seems to be at. This composition is ment to be set at the preverbial edge of the world.