Jeffrey Cangro

University Of FloridaMasters of Architecture Degree

2009

First Chair: John MazeSecond Chair: Mark Macleod

Urban CorpseAn Architecture of Transformation

Table of ContentsIntroduction

-The Industrial City-The Information Revolution-New Distribution Routes-Urban Corpse-State of Decay

Case Studies

-The City of Culture of GaliciaPeter Eisenman

-Frankfurt Rebstock and the Possibility of a New UrbanismPeter Eisenman

-Sculpture in the EnvironmentSITE

-Reducing the Metaphysics of Presence in ArchitectureGordon Matta-Clark

-Materialist Experiments and ExperiencesLebbeus Woods

-Cities of Artificial ExcavationPeter Eisenman

The Process

-The City-The Corpse-The Context-The Narrative Mappings-The Act of Discovery

The Conclusion

-Vignettes-Plan and Section-Critique

THE INDUSTRIAL CITY:

“Our urban system is based on the theory of taking the peasantand turning him into an industrial worker.”

(Roger Starr, New York’s Housingand Development AdministrationChief 1976,quoted in Fitch, 1993:viii)

The modern urban condition became the dominate way ofliving because of the industrial revolution; the rural peasantbecame the industrial worker. Cities developed along majorshipping routes, harbors, rivers, and railroad tracks. Localpeasants flocked to these centers for work, and the cities wereborn. Consequently the industrial revolution was also theurban revolution.

The industrialization of Western culture, which beganmore than two hundred years ago with the introduction of thesteam engine, continues to this day. It brought the machineand all of its constituent products into virtually all aspects ofmodern existence. From the way we live and work, to how werecreate and communicate; the presence of the machine hasdramatically changed the social and technological organiza-tion of culture.

But it is important to remember that the current urban fab-ric has been influenced by many factors over the course of itsdevelopment. Urbanization was only the beginning, over timethe city had transformed from the industrial to the postindus-trial, from the Fordist to the postFordist, from the modern tothe postmodern.Large industrial districts became the heart ofemerging urban conglomerations. This was closely followedby the creation of high rise office buildings in the center of thecities. Unfortunately, between 1950 and 1990 major cities lost40-65 percent of their middle-income jobs. The age of laborintensive information production, as well as labor intensivemanufacturing had come to an end. Many urban planners andproperty owners began to seriously contemplate "de-con-structing" -bulldozing- downtown America as the only meansof restoring the prosperity of industrial cities.

THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION:

Peter EisenmanEleven Points on Knowledge and Wisdom

“Science no longer focuses on the problem of man and nature. Rather, sci-ence is concerned with the struggle of man to overcome knowledge. Thisimportant epistemological shift from man/nature to man/knowledge hascreated a problem for architecture as no other discipline: first architecturemust continue to stand against gravity and shelter against nature and sec-ond because the shift has trivialized the formerly significant symbolism ofthese acts.”

With the era of the computer well under way, the world isfast becoming an interconnected global marketplace. Ad-vancements in networked data highways have brought allcorners of the world market into a single, distributed, andvastly diversified field of shared knowledge. These new“highways” have in many ways replaced the existingphysical highways and distribution routes. Thanksto these new data highways people can now do al-most everything from their desks at home; theycan work, they can shop for almost anything(food, clothes, a new car), they can search an

endless list of information, they can travel the world and be back on time fordinner, they can enjoy social events and even meet their future spouses. In-formation and knowledge, rather than labor and geographic resources, havebecome primary commodities.

NEW DISTRIBUTION ROUTES:

We live in a world of vast webs of inter-connected systems: unintelligible distribu-tion systems deliver all manner ofmass-produced objects anywhere on theplanet; communications move though invis-ible fields of data; sound waves, mi-crowaves, and radio waves are everywhereyet nowhere. We are unimaginably con-nected, and yet somehow disconnected.

Almost every object we interact with is aproduct of industrialization; from the food weeat, the cars we drive, too the homes andcities we live in. In the near future, everyobject will also be part of an ever-expandingnetwork of information.

The idea of destroying such prominent urban fabricis unsustainable. In many cases the cities grew uparound these districts, there identity is unduly tied to thenature of the industrial districts. The infrastructure ofthe city including the railroads, harbors, and even roadsare all tied back to these districts. Removing giantpatches of this urban fabric and supplementing it with analien condition would create conflict within the urbanform. This idea is supported by Norman Foster’s articleArchitecture and Sustainability” in which he writes

“Up to 60 percent of the energy and resources usedin construction is spent on the shell and core of a build-ing, so retention of a building’s structure through conver-sion makes sound ecological sense.”

My proposal includes using a scheme of recursionand feedback to examine the urban condition both pastand present and allow the system to respond naturally,in a dissipative manner. The fabric must be revitalizedby allowing the energy and prominence of the precedentto recur, through a careful process of dialogue, interac-tion, choice, and a state of unpredictability. The polariza-tion of the modern urban condition is another topic Iintend on examining and reediting in the urban corpseproposal; as well as the interactions of public and pri-vate, particularly the trend toward privatization of publicspace. The reinterpretation and reinvention of the urbancorpse will bring a new vitality to the heart of the urbancondition, helping to slow the current trend of urbansprawl.

Ebor CityAbandoned Cigar Factory

URBAN CORPSE:

STATE OF DECAY:

“It appears that there is a certain point in the mind wherefrom life anddeath, reality and imaginary, past and future, the communicable andthe incommunicable cease to be perceived in a contradictory way.”

Andre’ BrentonThe Second Manifesto

The Modern movement as well as the heroic tra-dition of the thirties created an environment thatfeared death. Society had a deep and unconsciousfear of death, but it went further then that, they wereunable to tolerate any aspect of corrupted flesh. Infact in order for life to thrive one had to remove anytraces of death. The idea of death extended todecay, rot, decomposing flesh.

However the bleached white bones did not cre-ate the same dilemma. People were at least able totolerate if not appreciate the white remains of theParthenon. The dry white remains afforded decencyand respectability.

Death is tolerated only when the bones are white

Goolraj Singhanee Infectious Cases Ward

Parthenon

Case Studies

-The City of Culture of GaliciaPeter Eisenman

-Frankfurt Rebstock and the Possibility of a New UrbanismPeter Eisenman

-Sculpture in the EnvironmentSITE

-Reducing the Metaphysics of Presence in ArchitectureGordon Matta-Clark

-Materialist Experiments and ExperiencesLebbeus Woods

-Cities of Artificial ExcavationPeter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman

“Galicia, the historic community of theAtlantic finis terrae located at the end ofthe pilgrim’s route to Santiago de Com-postela, has been the cultural meetingpoint of Western Europe since the ninthcentury, when the grave of ApostleJames was discovered here. Millions ofpeople from all walks of life have trav-eled along the pilgrimage today in aceaseless flow of faith and knowledge,in an exchange of cultures and ideas.”

Manuel Fraga Iribarne,President of the Xunta de Galicia

The City of Culture of Galicia

When Peter Eisenman laid out the City of Culture above Santiago deCompostela, he transferred the pattern of streets from the existing town tohis plan for the new, but he did not assign them to their old purpose. In-stead, he held them in abeyance, for they are neither passageways on hissite nor obvious lineaments in its buildings but rather reversible markingswithin them. As such, they have only an unstable presence, emerging andsubsiding momentarily within the new.

Peter Eisenman describes the project as a “Fluid Shell”. He arrangedthe project atop a hill facing the historic city from which he “transferred” hisplan. The City of Culture is a merge of the traces of old Santiago with thesymbolic receptacle of the saint’s shell.

However neither the shell nor the transferred street pattern remainswhat they were. With the mastery of landscape and the introduction of or-thogonal grids that eventually deform in rhythmic distortions; a fluid geo-logical strata in which geometrical cracks have been carved emerges,ultimately revealing the City of Culture.

Symbol, Icon, and Index“A symbol is an arbitrary reference, an icon has a perceptual relationship to its object, and an

index has a physical and temporal relationship to its referents. Indices in this sense were phys-

ical marks, traces, imprints, or clues--- like footprints left in the sand--- concerning a real event

that had taken place rather then a transcendental truth or signified. For example, the footprint

in the sand suggests a prior action of some physical presence; it is the trace of that action or,

in another sense, a record of a process.”

Peter Eisenman ---Codex

Layers of information laid over the site.The ridges of the scallop shell, originaltown streets, and flow lines are used todevelop the final design of the site andits buildings.

“The deformation and flow lines of the project are vectoral notations in space generated by atorquing action that produces the third dimension as a coded rewriting of the two-dimensional index.Neither geometric nor planimetric, these lines are analogous to the strands of the nucleotides of amolecule. As they change spatial position, they change notation. They are no longer indices ofmeaning but instead are another condition of diagram—a three dimensional matrix of forces.”

By the processes of tracing, imprinting and superposition a diagram is produced. The diagramthrough its arbitrary and random juxtaposition was able to reorganize the existing context into a newstructure.

Frankfurt Rebstock and thePossibility of a New Urbanism

Peter Eisenman

“The entry of Germany on the sceneof philosophy implicates the entireGerman spirit which, according toNietzsche, presents little that isdeep but full of foldings and unfold-ing.”

Gilles Deleuze,Le Pli

Folding, Unfolding and RefoldingThe articulation of the project site began with a seven by seven or-

thogonal grid being laid over the entire Rebstockpark site in an attemptto establish both spatial and temporal modulation. The grid was thenlaid over and deformed by the contours of the actual site. The grid ispassed through the net of a “folding” operation, derived from a modifiedversion of Rene Thom’s butterfly net. This process is meant to intro-duce another sense of space and time within the urban landscape.

The next step was the development of building masses that allowedfor the required program. Their location and organization was devel-oped in accordance with relation to nearby parks and financial districts,allowing for a proper programmatic distribution in the site. Thesemasses were then introduced into the “folding” grid. The folds of thegrid were able to influence both plan and section in the buildings.

“In folding the Rebstock plot, Eisenmanhopes to index the complexifications in urbanspace that have unfolded since the War, thosewhich contextualism has been unable to treat.”

John Rajchman

Unfolding Frankfurt

Catastrophic Intrusion

“In Rebstockpark, the housing and commercial unitsno longer fiqure as discrete extrusions out of a planar, grid-ded space, but appear to have been deformed through anintensive intrusion that seems to have come from nowhereand to take one elsewhere. They appear as though theywere the remains of an irruption that had broken out of theground and had returned to it, suggesting that such a “cat-astrophic” occurrence might arise again anywhere in thecalm solidity of things.”

John RajchmanUnfolding Frankfurt

The intrusion or eruption has caused a fold in the site; it has created a “crease” in the site.Eisenman has shifted the understanding of site from a two dimensional “pattern” or plan to a threedimensional “fabric”. This urban fabric cannot be captured in a figure-ground plan.

The crease of the fold is the connecting space between the various activities. It charges theurban fabric allowing the space between units or program to come alive. But the catastrophic in-trusion that created the fold has the feel of something foreign. It does not appear to be from thesite or program, in fact in many cases it seems to go against it. The fold distances the occupantfrom the traditional perception of the space; it transports the viewer “elsewhere”.

Eisenman’s answer to understanding the Reb-stockpark site was not a reduction of complexity.He understood that sometimes it is best to fold in awrinkle or two, it shakes things up. Bringing clarityto what was obscure, and illuminates what was al-ready visible.

In the Urban Corpse proposal this concept willbe very valuable. Understanding the urban fabricand how to bring clarity to the site is paramount.Folding in complexity introduces another sense ofspace and time within the urban landscape. Thisallows the intervention to simultaneously be tied tothe past, present and future. This is the idea of theUrban Corpse, to bring a new life to the site by re-folding the urban fabric.

Folding and seeingcomplexity and clarity

perplexity and illumination

“Everyone in the early pre-SITE discussions felt the needfor a strengthened public language that would be more respon-sive to a disordered and pluralistic society or what was thencommonly referred to as the “post-Industrial world””

James Wines,Foreword in SITE

Sculpture in the EnvironmentSITE

The Vision

SITE’s early projects were for the Best Product showroom. The typical big box storesof the day were eyesores, offering little in the way of personal space or artistic creativityand the original Best showrooms were no exception. What SITE decided to do was to ac-tually keep the original big box design, both from a functional standpoint and as an archi-tectural relic. They decided to focus on architecture as a reflection of social andpsychological issues, as a source of information and commentary, as an expression of re-actions to context and the physicality of context itself, and as a fusion of art and building.This thinking laid the foundation for many of their future work as well.

The Best Notch Showroom in Sacramento, California is an example where the basic commercialbuilding prototype has remained unchanged. In fact when the gap is closed the building becomes astandard commercial building, with a suspicious crack in its façade. The notch showroom uses reductionsas additions, the crack separates and the wedge moves 40 feet on a track to open the showroom. Manyof Sites BEST product showrooms share this basic artistic idea. The idea of decay suspended, or abuilding suspended somewhere between construction and demolition with evidence of disintegration. Ithas been interpreted as a commentary on the precarious future of the consumer culture. The idea thatthe building may be crumbling around you but there is still time to buy one more blender. As seen in theBest Indeterminate showroom in Houston, Texas.

The inclusion of nature or theinvasion of it helped further the dis-cussion of decay. The Best ForestShowroom in Richmond Virginiawas constructed around an existingforest. It gives the illusion that na-ture has taken back the site, butonce again Best is holding back na-ture long enough to keep buying.It’s an interesting dis-cussion on the idea ofbuilding envelope,and what must andmust not be present.

Reducing the Metaphysics of Presence inArchitecture

Gordon Matta-Clark

“When Gordon Matta-Clarkcut a house in half, he left atrace of the act while reducingthe metaphysic of the idea ofthe “home”, shelter, enclosure,etc, to pure presence.”

Peter Eisenman,L’ora Che E’ stata

Matta-Clark was able with the most minimal of action to remove or sep-arate the very concept of architecture. He was able to remove the idea offamily, the idea of safety, the concept of enclosure, the traditions of occu-pation and function. The cuts altered the “form” of the house.

The cuts themselves mean nothing they are arbitrary in a sense. How-ever because of the cuts the house is no longer a house. It has lost all ofits ability to be a house. It can no longer protect from the elements; or pro-tect its occupants. It is no more architecture then a painting is. A simpleshift has altered the function, and has left the site in need of new meaningor definition.

The Conical Intersect Project 1975

This project is another example of how a simplecut in a previously defined piece of architecture canresult in the removal of definition or metaphysics topure presence. This simple act of carving changedthis apartment building into a piece of art; it was nolonger a home, or enclosure, or even a safe place.The idea of decay comes back into play. How muchdoes something decay or disintegrate, or how muchhas to fall away, before it is no longer architecture orbefore it loses meaning.

Materialist Experiments &Experiences

Lebbeus Woods

“Unheimlich: That which isstrangely familiar, that attracts onebecause it is made up of the mostessential quotidian reality, and thendisturbs what one thought was safehaven from the vicissitudes of anunknown world out there.”

Aaron Betsky,Terra Nova

Lebbeus Woods is a materialisticvisionary; his work carries on a tradi-tion of arts and crafts. In order to pro-duce an experimental architecture hemakes no distinction between making,building, drawing and architecture.Much of his work relies on Woods be-lief that advanced technology will opennew worlds to all mankind. The work isplaced in a post- apocalyptic future thathas sunk into a state of decay but hasrisen up in a flurry of craft and excava-tion.

“Woods sees the world as one of shiftingfragments that have become recombinedthrough the act of discovery” His work has asense that architecture is in need of fixing,unearthing, or mending. When he presentshis work he is not concerned with an obviousunderstanding of scale, of place or evenhuman inhabitation. Like Le Corbusier be-fore him Woods is concerned with creationof a new architecture for a new world.

Human existence vitally of the present

The projects that arise from the decay have takenon an almost organic sense, with a feeling that the workis in motion. That it is moving through, morphing to bothits surroundings and the implications of occupation. Hiswork seems to reference both the past and the futurewithout being stuck in either.

Woods writes that he often intentionallymasks or ignores the joint between the old andthe new. This is due in part to the fact that heis relying on an unknown structural system. Itis also possible that he keeps the joint vagueto continue the idea of architecture of the pres-ent. The invention or intervention appears tohave slipped in of unknown origins, ready todisappear into the unknown at any moment. Itrecalls ideas of a suspended decay, and an ar-chitecture of transformation.

Terms:

ChoiceRecursionFeedbackDeterminate fieldFree fieldHeterachy

The architecture of the present is an interesting idea; one thatallows a break from the urban fabric. In Woods proposal it tooka catastrophic upheaval of a semi-apocalyptic future to allow thisfreedom. The opportunity is also present in the void of the post-industrial city; an area that has become stuck in the past, to thepoint of decay and discard.

“They work within already strong sites in order toexpose these sites’ latent dynamism and theforces hidden within their stability leading to in-evitable transformation.” (Lebbeus Woods).

Cities of Artificial ExcavationPeter Eisenman

“History is not continuous. It ismade up of stops and starts, of pres-ences and absences. The pres-ences are the times when history isvital, is “running,” is feeding on itselfand deriving its energy from its ownmomentum. The absences are thetimes when the propulsive organismis dead, the voids in between one“run” of history and the next. Theseare filled by memory. Where historyends, memory begins.”

Peter EisenmanSouth Friedrichstadt as a placeto live and work

Eisenman proposes that the European city is in what he terms a mem-ory-void. The destruction from the war along with a de-void reconstructioneffort has resulted in the European city losing its identity. There is decayand ruins, pieces of a once vital urban fabric have been severed and onlya haphazard attempt at reconstituting it has been made. Eisenman de-scribes this attempt as if one were trying to preserve dinosaur bones. Theytake the few remaining fragments of the urban structure and preserve themas if they were bones or relics in a museum. This is an attempt to freezetime to preserve the memory or try and stop the decay from progressing.The other method he mentions is the attempt to reconstruct the past. Toreassemble the ruins or bones in an attempt to reverse time, but often theresult is misguided.

Eisenman’s proposal for his cities of artificial ex-cavation tried to go beyond this sterile idea of memory.One that is unable to reconcile the past, or look to thefuture. He tried to accomplish two things through hisinterventions; one was to reveal a specific history ofthe site, to render visible its memories. The other wasan attempt to relate the site to the world at large, or asEisenman puts it to “memorialize a place and to denythe efficacy of that memory.”

This is where Eisenman reveals his idea of anti-memory, an idea that allows him to take the site to anew level. Anti-memory is unique in that it does notdemand a past, or future. If you rely completely onmemory to inform the site you become entrenched ina romantic idea. It is through the layering of memoryand anti-memory that Eisenman is able to reduce andrefine the urban fabric and arrive at a new structureand order.

Scaling

“Infinite enlargements and reduc-tions infallibly repeat the self-same con-stitutive irregularities and anomalies”Eisenman's proposals included the ideaof anti-memory as a generative device.

It included elements retched from the past, or ones that were derived from “somewhere else”,but then scaled, twisted and layered over memories of the site until a new order emerged.

The idea of a site devoid of memory, one that has fallen into decay and ruins has emergedin many of Eisenman’s works. It allows for the introduction of a catastrophic intrusion that re-veals new order in the site. In other works it was a fold or crease that was introduced, howeverin this work it was anti-memory. The anti-memory element was derived from elsewhere andmelded with the site revealing similarities and differences that gave the site new life. The endresult was similar to that of Lebbeus Woods, it produces an architecture that is strangely familiar,but remains independent.

The Process-The City

pg.

-The Corpsepg.

-The Contextpg.

-The Narrative Mappingspg.

-The Act of Discoverypg.

The modern urban condition became the dominate way of living because of the industrial revolution;the rural peasant became the industrial worker. Cities developed along major shipping routes, harbors,rivers, and railroad tracks. I began to investigate local urban centers to find a site that embodies the traits. What I found was Fairfield a site located just east of downtown Jacksonville Florida. This site embodiedthe ideas of the Urban Corpse and would provide a charged matrix from which to work.

Fairfield's beginnings came in the late 1860’s when New Yorker Jacob S. Parker acquired over 150acres along the St. Johns River. Soon, Parker helped establish the second paved road and first tollfacility in Duval County through the area. A few years later in 1876, Jacksonville’s fairgrounds were es-tablished on the northernmost portion of Parker’s property, partially because he was the manager of thefirst Florida state fair. The fair’s popularity focused Parker’s attention on real estate, which resulted inhim naming the surrounding area "Fairfield". In 1880, the community was incorporated as a town andParker was elected as the first mayor. In 1887, with a population of 543 residents, the City of Fairfieldwas annexed into Jacksonville.

The City:

Fairfield has always been a community that has beenhome to heavy industry and recreation. Somewhat to itsdetriment, the economic engines that gave the commu-nity life have continued to grow and consume land whereresidents once lived. In many cases the industry has nowdisappeared leaving large tracts of Fairfield abandoned.The greatest example of this is the Ford Assembly Plant,which was a vital part of the urban fabric for manydecades. Pictured here in context, the Mathews Bridgeis being constructed next to the site. The bridge has be-come a major feature of the site; it now serves as a oneof the best viewpoints. It is also interesting to note the rel-ative residential nature of the context, which was in aprocess of transformation to industrial. This is clearlyseen in the destruction of urban fabric to make room forthe interstate projects going on at the time. This dividedneighborhoods creating a schism that lead to many areasbecoming desolate or converted to commercial/ industrialspaces..

Constructed in 1953, the steel trussMatthews Bridge is the second oldestbridge still standing in the city. It is namedafter John E. Matthews, a former Floridastate legislator and Chief Justice of the1955 Florida Supreme Court who helpedsecure funding for the bridge's construction.

The 165,000-sqaure foot assembly plantlocated at 1901 Hill Street was built in 1924, itis situated on a long quay that protrudes outinto the river and is supported by 8,000 piles.This is one of over 1,000 buildings designedfor Henry Ford by Albert Kahn, an internation-ally recognized industrial architect. In fact by1938, Kahn's firm was responsible for 20 per-cent of all architect-designed factories in theU.S.

It's known for having a pair of 800' skylightpanels that provide natural light into the indus-trial plant below. At one point, Ford employedover 800 workers who spent their time manu-facturing 200 Model-T and Model A cars andtrucks a day. Ford shut down this operation inthe late 1960's. Today, the factory has madethe "Jacksonville's Most Endangered HistoricBuildings" list.

The Corpse:

Ford Assembly Plant Jacksonville Florida

Pictures of the factory at the height ofproduction. Notice the level of sunlightingin the building a feature carefully thoughtout by Albert Kahn.

(Below) building in current state, manyof the windows have been boarded reduc-ing the full effect.

Series of picturesshowing current conditionof Ford Factory. Even in itsdilapidated state the origi-nal skylights still provide arich lighted environment.The scale can only be trulyexperienced in person.

The industrial detailingof the building is at a level ofintricacy that elevates itabove a simple utilitarianfunction, although utility iswhat originally generatedthe formal details.

A main hypothesis of the project became the idea that the corpsegrew out of major shipping routes, harbors, rivers, and railroad tracks. Asa result the Idea of distribution routes became an important design node.I began mapping and tracing these distribution routes in search of marks,traces, imprints, or clues in the urban fabric. I investigated the currentcondition of the greater Jacksonville context looking for marks that wouldlead back to the original forces. This lead to a series of increasingly fo-cused mappings that began to investigate individual elements revealed inthe larger diagram.

The Context:

Amain factor became the city grid, through a series of overlays inves-tigating the original city grid compared to the current expansion, clues orimprints of forces became revealed. These imprints were then mapped tofurther the understanding of site. These imprints or forces included rail-roads, harbor and port conditions, and the idea of the city having grown asseveral distinct nodes that grew back into each other to create the largercontext.

The diagrams and mappings produced were then used to produce a series of future tracings. These di-agrams included elements retched from the past, these were elements revealed through the mappingprocess. But then scaled, twisted and layered until a new order emerged. This is accomplished through acareful process of dialogue, interaction, choice, tracing, imprinting and a state of unpredictability.

The Narrative Mappings:

The idea of decay comes back into play. How much does something decay or disintegrate, or how muchhas to fall away, before it loses meaning. The maps were “decayed” or randomly cut away. The cuts them-selves are arbitrary in a sense; However because of the cuts the diagram now reveals hidden forces, it hasan unstable presence, emerging and subsiding momentarily within the new. A simple shift has altered thefunction, and has left the site in need of new meaning or definition. Folding in complexity introduces anothersense of space and time within the urban landscape. This allows the intervention to simultaneously be tiedto the past, present and future.

If you rely completely on memory to inform the site you become entrenched in a romantic idea.

The diagrams produced were able to become free of scale, place, or time. They became a series

of narrative mappings that were highly layered and charged. When the Future tracings or narrative

mappings were overlaid on the site, they were able to inform it in ways that simply pulling in context

would not have been able to do. The diagrams were the first instance of an architecture of trans-

formation in the site.

The shifting fragments have

become recombined through

the act of discovery. The map-

pings have generated fields that

become charged according to

their contextual relationships. I

began experimenting with ideas

of massing and spatial relation-

ships generated from these

fields. The massing appear to

have been deformed through a

catastrophic intrusion that

seems to have come from

nowhere or from another time,

ultimately revealing the spatial

conditions that became the in-

tervention.

The Act of Discovery:

Unfortunately many of my first

attempts became fractal in nature.

The spatial conditions became lost

in translation. This was due in part

to the fact that I had not clearly de-

fined or comprehended the rules set

forth in the narrative mappings. The

mappings are very charged and had

an overwhelming effect on this criti-

cal step.

The Conclusion

The idea of the project from the beginning was acontextual investigation of a charged urban fabricthrough a series of artificial excavations and filters.This investigation created a series of narrative map-pings that would inform an architectural interventioninto the context; providing an architecture that is of thesite but also of another place and time. The architec-ture would rise from the work; that is to say it would begenerated in the process. The formal vocabulary,scale, materiality, and spatial conditions would all arisefrom the diagrams. This proved a much greater chal-lenge then anticipated, and a leap was made towardarchitecture. The following are a series of vignettesthat are an attempt to capture the scale, materiality,and spatial conditions that would arise from theprocess.

The plan and section were generated from the diagrams and the ideas set up in the massing exercises.The larger idea was an architecture that is generated from the narrative mappings and resulted in an ar-chitecture of intrusion. A formal language that is temporal in nature, I wanted the elements to appear as ifthey rose out of the context, pushed up by some latent force and ready to disappear just as fast. The ideawas tied back to the original narrative mappings; they were snapshots of a contextual conglomeration thatrevealed moments within the fabric. It was through the process of layering, scaling, and deformation thatkey forces within the city were revealed. Each of the narrative mappings or future tracings were momentsfrozen in time, and at each of these moments different dynamic forces with the context were revealed. Itwas these forces that I had hoped to use within the intervention; allowing the architecture to respond in anatural ebb and flow or an almost organic architecture. An Architecture of Transformation.

Although the end result was not as successful as I had hoped, the process taught me a great deal. Thefinal critique led to many avenues of exploration and potential resolutions for the project. The main obser-vation was the fact that there was a large leap from the narrative mappings or process work to the finalproduct. This was an admittedly week point in the project spurred on by my desire to attain architecture in-stead of allowing architecture to rise from the process. This also lead to a loss of meaning or a disconnectfrom the diagram. Because I had not fully realized the potential or investigated and defined the forces de-veloped in the diagrams I was not able to use them to inform the spatial conditions to the level desired.

Another key point was the way in which I chose to touch or interact with the existing building. As it is Ihave left the building completely unaltered, except for a few entry or exit points. There stood a great potentialto allow the intervention to begin to carve away or decay the corpse further. I think my first attempt to inter-vene within such a powerful and contextually charged building resulted in a sense of awe in a way. Thebuilding became too much of an architectural relic; which prevented the forces from truly working within thefabric. I believe that having a better understanding of the forces I was pulling from the diagrams wouldallow me to have a larger effect on the building. A potential solution mentioned was attaching meaning andmyth to the lines and grids of the mappings so that they add some function to the moves and collisions aswell as defining what is touched and what is not.

Another comment made to this effect was to maybe leave the intervention out of the building, or justallow it to become a moment of intersection. This is an interesting idea, one that may be valid in relation tothe level of understanding that I was able to get from the contextual investigation. However my intentionfor the project, and given more time I would hope the result would be an intervention that is strong enoughto work within the Corpse; one that has enough command to handle the rich fabric that lead me to investigatethe situation in the first place.