Current | Visual Studies | Works

Sanctuary

Gisela Baurmann with James Kerestes (VS)
Studio at University of Pennsylvania

20071014

Dear all,

Following are my notes from the feedback you got on Wednesday at our pin-up. In general I think it became clear for everyone that a lot of potential in your work so far has gone unexplored. This is the moment to look back extensively and try to extract the valuable input that you created so far and systematically document it in order for it to become productive material for the generation of your very specific and personal retreat center. You all have generated this potential, and you all should make use of it! There should be a huge production going right now, employing all the techniques you developed and re-reading all your initial models. I am curious to see it all!
These are the comments on each project, please read through all of them as the reaction to someone else's work is often transposable to your take.

Emily and John: you made a great step with your program model. It can now show you instances of specific program adjacencies, overlaps, etc. - those that respond to your individually desired viewpoint of the program. You have been searching for this step for a while and now it is there. Great! Play with it; test how different layouts re-arrange your program pieces to explore its full potential.
Secondly you really have to explore your crochet models, especially the one in which you specifically crocheted your program. Draw its (global) diagram, draw several sections through it, photograph it. Produce a few new ones in reaction to your new and refined program models. Compare, rearrange, refine. You have all the tools you need now produce, produce, produce as much as you can with them to develop an optimized layout. Employ the crochet models to discover moments of unique spatiality that you want to develop further for the spatial expression of your retreat.

Erica: The program diagrams for mind, body spirit that you generated so far are superbly developed and executed. You are very precise in this work and create beautiful expressions. Yet I think at this point they are not specific enough to be generative. They remain in the gestural realm... I understood that you explore possibilities of creating surfaces through varying loopings, and specifically how these surfaces change depending on the kind of loops; and alternatively the kind of global outline you loop them around. You could generate this productive specificity by associating your index of activities as input relative to the different kind-of-loopings plus kind-of-global-outline you associate them with.
That same logic could also be employed for the spatial expressions you generated in your crochet models, in order to start with a concrete assembly logic.

Kara: Your quest for the liminal spaces is extremely interesting. Not only because of your program and the impact (and importance) of the liminal space there, but as an architectural topic altogether. You know you are onto something more fundamental in architecture here, right..? That said, your crochet models are the clue. You wanted to employ them all along, now you know how: draw their global diagrams, cut their sections and photograph them, while arranging each one so that it displays one of its many spatial conditions in each section series/shot. You create a whole taxonomy from these models. You also rebuild their spatial expression as a series of paper models. Extract those minimal conditions such as enclosure, connection, nature of curve (convex/concave, continuous, one directional, etc.) in each moment and each arrangement. You can do that, as we spoke of by threading a red fat strand through your crochet models. The paper models of the next generation will form the base for your assembly logic.

Dan and Leslie: this is a beautifully developed concept and you found a way to parallel your investigation with a material expression in that looping paper model early on. One thing now is to introduce yet a finer grain for your loops…. so that the loop blurs the boundary between becoming "a" space/program/room to transitioning from here into the scale of a building element such as a girder, a wall section, etc.
Another finer grain that you should introduce is to explore the kind of loops further. It is not all "plain stitch" (just to name one…you should invent your own taxonomy of stitches!), and it is not only "over/under", but…. "triple relay", or "double outside reference", or "sevenfold loop before next reference to global fabric"... etc. In your existing paper model you generated a system of aggregation through looping. Now you can refine this aggregation by diversifying its source as well as its outcome.
A coherent parallel investigation will bring you further into your crochet models: moments of spatiality, in reference to the stitch, the global diagram, the... Like everyone else: use these early models, systematize the conditions they generate as a resource for your work.

Danisha and Vincent: Again, your word cloud, with its tags and overlaid program elements is a phantastic vision. It has been generated through intense work from your side and that absolutely shows. You should take the associations its suggest very seriously! They don't just happen, they make sense for your individual understanding of your program. Because you created them through research, through placing and re-placing and finally by arranging the words. So, here is your very own work. The idea of the program diagram is that, by placing program parts or program activities in a coordinate system, you can find typical program associations, groupings and densities (you can partially define these things by using common sense as well, yet not all of them occur by employing common sense - the more interesting ones usually "happen" as a resultant of arrangements of different program parts, which tag other ones along). The coordinate system is set up using qualities, which describe your interest/emphasis on the program pieces themselves, you "measure" the program relative to this/your point of view. In these models, not the unit that represents a program part is important, but only its relationship to the next one, and the next, and all of them together, etc.
But if this is unclear and you want to create something with a formal and spatial expression now, use the crochet models. They display a wealth of spatial moments, which, if you modeled them in paper (=a different material) you will find what makes each moment different from another one, and after you produced many of them, you'll be able to tell what triggers the difference. And how you can exaggerate it., So, build these paper models, build them even in a scale much larger than their respective crochet samples, and you generate your source material for spatial assembly.

Lauren: your statement "generating a broad variety from a finite number of elements" is a great insight for crochet. Your system of little movers/worms/curves is very very smart - a great working strategy. It now needs to be filled with life! There could be endlessly many of them, or just a few - and I prefer just the few, yet if that is the case, they need to be able to respond to many tasks, perform at different scales, behave structurally explicit, etc., etc. You created such great crochet pieces - a lot of variation at a big spread. So, use them, generate spatial conditions that can be interpreted from these existing models, both in your system and also as paper models to explore physical properties - scales, structural behavior, connection opportunities.

Joshua and Young: The stitch matrix you developed is very strong. It is simple, it is rich, it allows a lot of combinatory variety with hugely different outcome. Great. You also found techniques (the morph and blend) to explore their potential, as well as their spin-offs - the 'surround spaces'. Their occurrence relative to the main body - size, orientation, etc.- will certainly give you ideas to speculate on. You can lay out the program as an array of loops relative to the programmatically assigned conditions between spaces. ...can you script this? (ask Jon to help you! He shoudl be back, no) This is one trajectory.

Yet, the finer grain, and the spatial condition relative to a stitch or relative to one specific algorithm are already generated in the crochet models. Also the feedback between factors such overall size relative to unit numbers, porosity, continuity, 3 dimensional expression (!!) and so on are fine tuned in them. Employ them. Rebuild them as 3D physical models from watercolor paper and you can test their behavior - structure, connections, spatial continuity and complexity. Imagine them in various scales: as system that accumulates and becomes an element in a space, as a space, as a connection,... Use these as foundation, the pool of ideas for the expression of your proposal.

Alan: you are thinking of the program as a set of activities. The idea of "measuring" programs through sensory qualities they engage is very rich. I would love to see you employ this program of yours - i.e. switch between modes of production in order to learn about your project's properties in the transposition from one medium to the other. What do you have to take along, what can you leave behind without losing your project? What is the scale of that which you build and how does it connect/transition/morph… The answers to these questions change each time you employ a different mode of expression (paper model, drawings, sketch, computer model, etc) each time you also have the opportunity to exaggerate those features that you find most unique for your project. Test it!

Kenta: You should have a few more crochet pieces. I am not sure whether you explored the fabrication process, the local to global interdependency and the performance of the thread fully yet. What do you draw from the continuity, elasticity, porosity, and overall shape that crochet creates by threading a single line?
The project is very much about the fine gradient, the subtle difference, the differentiated change and so on. Therefore it is good to go deep into a technique, find its intricacies and quirks and be very imaginative as well as precise when you transpose from one technique to the next. In these intricacies lies the opportunity to make spatial arrangements beyond functional requirements; yet, still be able to respond to them. So, crochet, be precise in creating taxonomies and then chose those most intriguing moments to be rebuilt as paper models, as computer generated models, in sectional drawings, etc.
Develop your vocabulary that describes the retreat as well as its precise program. I want to discuss it all Monday!

Andrew: The layout of user groups relative to program pieces is very promising. It conceptually gives you the opportunity to follow up on your "bias" versus the youth (which, by the way is completely fine, desired even - as we are looking to find your individual way of expression your view through the architectural medium here... it would be a problem if you didn't have the "bias"...) Did the displacement between users and spaces give you room to speculate about? It should. If you are unsure about how to formally express it, test various ways. This is the only way to find out about the representational effects and relevance of a representation.
And then you can employ your crochet models. Read them (sections, build spatial moments from various materials, etc.. see the posts before in which I suggested some of the techniques)

Thanks again - see you Monday
PS: I'll be there shortly before 1pm, please make a sign-up sheet, so we can start right away. I might have a few announcements before I do deskcrits.

.: gisela 2:26 AM