The Enigma
An Ode to the Spring
Nowhere, Anywhere
Spring 2019
Advisor: Matthew Celmer
This courses structure is influenced by and borrows strategies from the Exquisite Corpse a well-known surrealist parlor game. The game entails collectively assembling a series of drawings. Each collaborator adds to the composition in sequence and is allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. The game results in distinctly different elements sharing the same space creating startling associations and combinations. This simple game questions and blurs the idea of individual authorship by producing a collaborative collective artifact and “it's also a perfect image of the city: our greatest, most out-of-control collective artifact.”
Rules of the Game
i. Spatial Primitives
Rules of the game:
• Students assigned (3) buildings to sample from
• Create (3) spatial primitives (1 from each building) in accordance with the limits below
• Final (3) spatial primitives were modified samples of the original building with (1) being a combination
ii. Accumulated Mass
Rules of the game:
• Each student is assigned (9) Spatial Primitives (SP)
• Each student will create (3) Accumulated Masses (AM) from the SP
• Each AM will be constructed of (3) SP
• You must use all (9) of your SP
• Each SP can only be used once
• 50% of the SP must remain in some form in the AM
• SP must be disassembled, disintegrated, trimmed, distorted, atomized, sampled, rotated, scaled etc.
• The SP must be integrated to create a new whole, placing the SP adjacent to each other does not constitute an AM
• A continuous form of circulation must exist that unifies the AM
• No additional geometry may be added, the SP you inherited will be modified as seen fit
• Do not model a ground plane that is distinct from you AM
• The bottom of your AM is not required to be flat
• The geometry of our AM is not required to touch all sides of the bounding box
iii. Collective Artifact
Rules of the game:
• Each team is assigned 6 Accumulated Masses (AM)
• Each team will create 1 Collective Artifact (CA)
• You must use all (6) of your AM
• Each AM can only be used once
• 50% of each AM must remain in some form
• Each AM must be modified (disassembled, disintegrated, trimmed, distorted, atomized, sampled, rotated, scaled etc.)
• The AM must be integrated to create a new whole, placing the AM adjacent to each other does not constitute an AM
• A continuous form of circulation must exist that unifies the CA
• Include a ground plane for the CA, create relationships between the ground plane and CA
• The human scale/figure should always be present in the design process
00 - Into the Lights
After receiving massings from classmates, some design decisions were made to achieve the final assembly. The massings vary in sizes and characteristics, some appear to be more apparent in spatial application while some appear to have no implication of what the space might be used for. Hence, a overall hollow grid was formed to house the massings. The transparency of the grid is intended to lighten the overall massing, and add a heavenly yet mysterious touch to it.
The circulation is realized through a series of ramps circling in and out of the massings, vertical direct circulation object, elevator, is housed inside three tubes. In an aim of celebrating the connection and difference between massings, a canyon was created and thus leads the building to split into two parts. Ramps connecting two parts of the building bridges the gap, while the canyon setting free the spirit of the building.
Transparent yet full of mystery, open yet enclosed. The building blurs the boundary of public and private spaces by making the hollow grid framing structure inhabitable, and the labels of dissimilarity through declaring the symbiotic relationship between the massings and the grid.
There was a kind of imperative not to touch them,
yet to be of them, whatever they were—
now lambs, now birds, now floating points of light—
fireflies signaling how many lost New England summers?
One form, now another; one configuration, now another.
Like fossils locked deep in the folds of my brain,
outliving a time by telling its story. Like stars.
--- ANNE STEVENSON