Core Studio II | Mid Review

I was creating spatial composites out of existing objects — reassembling them to create hybrids of things that colonize each other — and injecting new meaning to them. A new identity, a new purpose… To create something unfamiliar through the deterritorialization of the familiar.

This came from my study of building types — the adaptive reuse of old bank buildings for new purposes which presented discrepancies between form and content. Something suddenly only appeared to be what it’s supposed to be. Its new program accepted the elements it acquired and made it its own as two types began to operate as one. (See Core Studio II | Pin up | BANK CITY)

I started casting into the shell of things, creating volume out of voids and then chipping away at the shell — the reverse of taking the building and keeping the facade, which is how we understanding repurposing today.

This lead to the construction of my very own building modules as I started to really dematerialize and lose reference from the beginning (from what it used to be) somehow through the material I chose and getting the negative of the negative of the positive, etc. It became something else entirely. It was chipping away, going away from its previous life and becoming its own life.

*side note: just invert something once in a while. look that that!

A double existence is present, once again. A doppelanger condition, if it hasn’t already been so obvious — from the non-bank bank to the spatial composites, etc. There is a false appearance going on in this current model. The facade becomes the informing element for what’s generating the inside. It’s not like the brick or the skin is a separate entity but it becomes the building itself. It just happens to be so thick that it’s inhabitable.

These characteristics were beginnning to set up the program of my bank…

I started to look at how this bank could be this independent entity that tracks and records the city — an archive of urban form. I recalled the earliest forms of banking and how banks used to be something that collected value — a place to put your things securely. One deposited one’s goods into a place that was a safeguard.

My bank could be an analog archive of people’s bizarre collections of things, like a storage for collectors. But it’s not just the idea of collecting things but I’m marrying that with the idea of bringing one’s goods to a safe place, which is kind of quintessential to what banks used to be.

It would become a record things — of urban fixations, strange addictions, specific to the personality type of a collector (I’m sure some of us might identify with).
But they love and are passionate about collecting, to be with their things, seeing them, playing with them. So it’s not just for your boxes where you lock it in a storage and leave. No. It’s not just a storage. The bank would become a type of community. It’s like a bank deposit box slash self storage slash museum.

Any collection of things gains value over time. That’s part of the reason people collect things. It’s an investment. This is a space that (maybe) displays and (definitely) preserves value. A secure archive. After x many years it would be worth x times…

And through this bizarre accumulation with an almost unknown goal, it would become a colony. The bank would become a colony for collectors. A collector’s colony… colonized by their objects. A bank of urban form, really.

The review went way too well. And it was way too short. I hate it when that happens. 15 minutes isn’t enough to get to what I really need to hear. You can go on and on about how much you like how I did this, impressed by how I did that, but I need you to tell me what I am missing.

———-
3/12/12
update: a colony would be a good project, but Christoph wants this taken to another level. “That would just be good, but we are capable of great.”
notes from table crit I need to decipher over the break: (taken from the scrap paper i was writing on during crit, honestly don’t know what half of this means)

Trigger. Inspire.

1) introduces idea of memory
– deterioration of material – thoughts and memories
– imagination, because you lose and forget……
you project vision…
vision that captures history
how does that work if buildings go in reverse to history (decay)

exposure to user, less exposed to self.
forget. deteriorate.

Seattle Public Library – how homeless take over, doubles up what it has become

result rather than desired obectivity

Trigger… rewrite… reinvent.

Sci ARC Vidler

How do you construct something that starts to record what has not been there?

that’s what monuments are not….

Carve things out… add material first.
you build to forget. TOPOGRAPHIC

focused on itself.
let it be a fragment in certain parts.
found objects not constructed, reinvented.
an archive, but not just how we understand it.
ARCHIVES ITSELF.

recording device.
needle…… for records. how long do you record what… which does not have an audiencee…….

Broken lines… 3D… network… ____

___________

3/15/12

So, I’m recording a projected vision that somehow captures history.  This is not a monument though. Monuments are built to commemorate something present – an event, a person, a place. To construct something that starts to record what has never been there: you build something and let it record itself… As in, there is no imposing element that would create a memory; it would just organically track its transformations by not hiding, repairing its very own “deterioration” I suppose… or construction, actually. Constructed deterioration? Is this a relic? A relic in reverse? So, it could be building fragments of something… that was never there, or something that was there or was something else and is becoming something new. Am i talking about a projection of the modules or are the modules projections themselves? Tf the the modules are what they are…. Wait.

To construct something that starts to record what has not been there: what has not been there is the rest of the building that “deteriorated.” It has never been there. I created an imprint of something – a relic through the model-building process that I’ve taken, it really is a ruin. So, to create what was never there, to record what was never there, you imagine what it might have been or what it could be. How would it be constructed and recorded? Would it build onto itself? would i create an armature upon which i foresee the “marks” are to be “remarked”? And let the city string them together? Wait. So it’s like a fossil – with memory, layers, but a ruin – defragmented, lost memory… that somehow records, tracks a projection…. the relic from the future. Design the thing and let nature take over? Is that what we mean by an archive? It’s archiving layers of the city, textures of the city… textures of ITSELF.

-could the components between be the projected memory

-is it a post apocalyptic park

-this is a programmatic study but how is it actually inhabited… space allocation wise? i get program and space allocation mixed up all the time when i am talking to christoph. he claims we have never talked about my project formally and i realize we actually have not. the form just emerged. literally… from the damn mold.

ru·in/?ro?oin/

rel·ic/?relik/