The “top-down” model of authorship that defines the discipline of architecture is inconsistent with emergent phenomena of open access, bottom-up participation, and collective knowledge. Reinterpreting architecture in relation to these phenomena could prove beneficial, both by allowing the discipline to remain culturally relevant and revealing the beauty, complexity and responsiveness of collective authorship.
Research:
Click on completed sections to view and comment on my writing in Google Docs:
The past 12 weeks I've been investigating the idea of architectural content and infrastructure.
The following are design studies that explore these ideas through installations, furniture, and speculative projects.
How can architecture provide the framework for its own manipulation?
Typo
Typo is an interactive furniture piece designed for the 2015 Vellum Furniture Competition. It's designed to be disassembled and reconfigured. It's a framework for creative interaction - a tool designed to be played with. Since it has no clearly defined use, it can't be misused. It can be a chair...or a table...or something entirely new.
The piece received an Honorable Mention in the competition, and will soon be featured on ArchitektureClips, a website for short films about architecture and urban culture.
The Content Shuffler
The Content Shuffler is an installation created for the Thesis Abstract Show. The device allows people to re-organize my thesis content either by controlling the rotation of the display posts or by rearranging the magnetic words. Throughout the show, my original statement was scrambled into new sentences and fragments.
Actuator is an elevated structural frame that supports mechanized architectural elements. A system of hydraulic actuators and rails moves elements into different relationships with one another. At this stage, I was primarily focused on an infrastructure that would allow the movement of physical content. I was less aware of the spatial affects that would accompany changes in the environment, and more focused on the technical aspects of moving elements.
Actuator
Aggregate is an experiment with fixed infrastructure and combinatory modules. It proposes a central spine that moves and distributes people and systems across different modules. The modules are spaces of individual control, and could accumulate along the central structure over time. This study explored boundaries of control. It divided control between the architect, who is responsible for the infrastructure, and the inhabitants, who are in control of individual modules.
Aggregate
My latest design study, sited on the tracks at the Hudson Yards, is a mobile architectural infrastructure. The project allows its inhabitants to mobilize architectural objects in a field and control environmental, social and programmatic aspects of the design. The proposal is characterized by various strategies of movement. The linear tracks provide the means for tectonic shifts and large-scale changes in adjacencies, circulation and program. The mechanized facades allow inhabitants to respond more swiftly to environmental or social conditions by controlling light and views.
Architecture in Motion
This is just the beginning of the research I will do this year. I'm excited about the direction I've taken, and I'm looking forward to publishing my writing, research and final project in May.
If you're interested in supporting me, please visit my GoFundMe campaign!