Core Studio II Grit Constellation Mutation: a sectional timeline

It’s a sectional timeline / genesis / mutation study of my project’s material, formal, and programmatic evolution. The current physical model exists somewhere in the middle (*Phase 6, which we are calling Appeal following Dissolve and Embody)
I think it’s beginning to speak.

*Appropriated from Doppelganger: Images of The Human Being

This is the first diagram I’ve ever made that actually tells the entire story of my project. So, very briefly, it goes from a junkyard/scrap collector machine that compresses the “grit” of the city into the brick modules via some sort of hammer mill. Operators occupy the armature at this “machine” phase, as the scraps are distributed, inserted, multiplied, divided, pressed into “activators” or the molds. It then becomes so thick – the armature in Phase 6 is like a cookie dough cutter, slowly allowing the now very dense material to take on the form of various spatial dividers until it reaches another brick module – at which point they would break into each other, embrace, interlock, or fall. There’s some idea of “clearing out” for a new round, or lifting finished modules up, accumulating them and carrying on with the next composite. This would happen in phases and it would really become a record of things manifested through a record of the building. The building is literally collecting itself, displaying itself. In time, this would become a colony of collections for collectors. It just makes so much sense to archive people’s junkyard-like scraps, the most bizarre collections of things and then display it, and then inhabit it. Junkyards are banks. There is this accumulation of people’s things, a display without ever really knowing who owns what. Somehow the bizarre accumulation of anything gains value over time. It’s interesting: I am defining who you are through everything that you are not. Your waste. Things you identify as your own but serves as nothing more than an obsolete/broken/lost [thing]. They are still yours but you need not encounter them. This detachment is as present in the system of banking we understand today. Value is somehow gained but kept at a distance. A misunderstood measure of distance.
There are two main phases: machine and then colony. The machine is creating the colony. The machine is how the colony has/will come about. The building IS the machine – operating in several phases of “activations.”

More later. Gotta think this through.

It would be like a relic… but from the future. A post-apocalyptic ruin that keeps growing and collecting itself. Like a fossil operating in reverse.

——

4/19/12

Machine –> Archive – Park – Tool Bank –> Colony

Operators –> Collectors

At first I kept thinking why the collection system and the compressor had to be two separate entities. (I was stuck in masonry/concrete construction and literally imagined crushed, pebbled waste poured over and along steel armature reinforcement. What would make my wall detail any different from systems we already understand… except that my edges would be fuzzy and there would be a net, of some sort.

I was not thinking outside the box.

There had to be another way. I started thinking about the layering, fossilizing and thinking bout the modules as shells – literally, sea shells.

It’s a lung. It’s a section of a lung. That is the wall detail. That essentially is what the wall detail looks like.

i kept wondering if this could be a bio-machine or like a biological cyborg with machine aesthetics.

The armature could be a wireframe or the wireframe/armature could be this porous membrane. i realized that the armature itself is an organ – a digestive system. Imagine an oyster with teeth – it chews up material x (saliva/chemical becomes a solvent), it goes to the stomach (chemical is adhesive), produces these lung bubbles and then hardens into a pearl.

Look at the section mutation again and think powers of 10. (powers of -10)

at the building scale: Inhale – Deliver – Reshape – Conform – Embody
at the wall detail scale: Filter – Sort – Dissolve – Coagulate – Expand

The armature that the building begins with is a lung-like membrane with varying degrees of porosity. And the “grit” is everything from dust particles in the air to sediments from rainwater runoff to large and small metal scraps. The particles are sorted as they seep through the pores – these pockets where the inhaled material reacts to a solvent, and hardens with the membrane as a new layer of skin. The larger particles build up against the membrane like big pieces pulled by but can’t fit through a small nozzle of a vacuum cleaner – they become like an armor along the skin and start to layer vertically…building upwards. This is how we welcome large scraps of anything that don’t need to be “chewed up,” and also how the building begins to climb… and accumulate.. when it hits the other module growing towards it.

It’s like ear wax. The armor/structure is like ear wax buildup. It is protective until.. until it fails which brings up this idea of weathering.

I’m also determining what it means to have moments where components are penetrating the skin.

The wall detail is porous and veiny with pockets and, I’m thinking, with an activator-like robotic solvent/adhesive excreter – either at the small scale or the large scale “distributor” tube-like (or both – from chewing to “swallowing”).

Also, it doesn’t have to have the intricate bio-sci component. With or without, the wall detail would look the same. Only the size of the activators/pockets would change.

_____

more notes 4/20/12
sleep log 2 hours since wednesday

constantly evolving. caan happen in all/several different moments.
changes

http://www.grovelandscapearchitecture.com/wp-content/gallery/construction-documents/ledman-web.jpg
http://www.grovelandscapearchitecture.com/index.php/construction-documents/
architecture construction document schedule

fossilizing.

porosity

lung

block wiht pockets
M A C H I N E – – – – – – – > C O L O N Y
SORT
at the building scale: 1 Inhale – Deliver – 2 Reshape – v 3 Conform – 4 Embody

at the wall detail scale: 1 Filter – Sort – 2 Dissolve – 3 Coagulate – 4 Expand

FOSSILIZATION ORGAN DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

-PREHENSION
1A INHALE/DELIVER [MACRO]
1B FILTER/SORT [MICRO]
-COLLECT
ELEMENTS – POROSITY
SEIZE
GRASP
GATHER
>COMPONENTS MACRO > LARGE SCALE VACCUUM
>COMPONENTS MICRO > MEMBRANE, PRIMARY STRUCTURE
*MATERIAL > AIR: DUST, ASH > WATER: SEDIMENTS > SYNTHETIC: LINT >
SCRAP: METAL WASTE, BUILDING PARTS

-MASTICATION
2A RESHAPE
2B DISSOLVE
-CHEW
ELEMENTS -SALIVA
-TEETH
-SOLVENT
-LUBRICATION
Mastication, or chewing, is the first step in the breakdown of complex foodstuffs and serves several functions, including:
•breaking large pieces into small pieces, resulting in a massive increase in surface area, which is where digestive enzymes work
•softening of food and transformation into a size conducive to swallowing
•lubrication of food by impregnating it with saliva
>COMPONENTS MACRO > HAMMER MILL

-DEGLUTITION*
2.5A DELIVER/SORT [MACRO ONLY]
-SWALLOW
>COMPONENTS MACRO > DISTRIBUTOR TUBE

-ABSORPTION
3A CONFORMX
3B COAGULATE
-INTO FIBRE
-AMALGAMATE
ELEMENTS – LUNG NODULES
LUNG BUBBLES
>COMPONENTS MACRO > POCKETS

-FOSSILIZATION
4A EMBODY
4B EXPAND

>COMPONENTS MACRO > MODULE
>COMPONENTS MICRO > MASS, SECONDARY STRUCTURE

-EXCRETION*
-SPLINTER
-REGURGITATE
-FEEDBACK LOOP
ELEMENTS – EAR WAX, BUILDUP, THINGS STICKING OUT
>COMPONENTS MACRO > ARMORE, LARGE SCRAPS
>COMPONENT MICRO > TUMOR

Prehension is the process of seizing or grasping or otherwise getting food into the mouth. Different species use different techniques to prehend food – for example, horses and goats rely considerably on their lips, whereas cattle, dogs and cats don’t use their lips to any extent, but rather, gather many foods with their tongues. Studying comparative prehension can be entertaining, but is of minimal value for understanding digestion.
As with prehension, there are considerable differences among species in techniques used for drinking, that basically boil down to being either a “sucker” or a “lapper”. Drinking is usually an efficient process, although beards and moustaches can sometimes interfere.

Mastication, or chewing, is the first step in the breakdown of complex foodstuffs and serves several functions, including:
•breaking large pieces into small pieces, resulting in a massive increase in surface area, which is where digestive enzymes work

•softening of food and transformation into a size conducive to swallowing

•lubrication of food by impregnating it with saliva