Thursday, November 16, 2006



I think I found my site...

It is an abandoned sub - station / powerstation in New Jersey. At this point I am looking at the building itself as a site for multiple interventions of many scales...

The reason why I chose such an isolated building was to be able to have access to it without causing any sort of problems. I really want to be able to study it rather than just viewing something from the outside.

I have not gone inside yet. It was somewhat of a journey finding how to get to the building, so I got there right when it was getting dark and Im not brave enough to explore an abandoned building in an abandoned section of New Jersey at night alone. I did go into a few rooms and up a beautiful stairwell and it seems pretty promising. It has windows that go up the entire side of the building, so I'm hoping that there may be one large main room amongst the smaller rooms. I have a book of old sub stations in manhattan and they appear to have a layout like this. Another interesting point is that there are also many foundations from previous buildings directly adjacent to it.

I think that this may be going in the direction of multiple programs that might create something like a semi "urban" condition within one large building. I'm not really sure, I don't want to project any ideas onto the building before I actually go inside.

Synaesthesia drawings will most likely be the first step of documentation. I'm picturing unfolding the building into a sort of map that can then be notated. This may be a start for performative technique coupled with what I have already learned from the obelisk drawing.

3 comments:

Alex Gryger said...

Brian,

Sounds interesting, though I'd like to hear more about it. Having a specific program could help to address this, though I think probably need to consider its larger scale location. Its isolated and abandon condition makes its desirable for you as a site because you really seem to want to work in a ruin, but if you put a program into an isolated site, are people going to want to go there to inhabit your program? It could definitely work, I'm just suggesting that you think about this in the selection of your program.

bjones said...

yes, you're definately right...
I feel like I need to go in to really know what is going on. It is right next to railroad tracks, a highway, and a river (Each one cuts off each side of the building). Maybe these can be used to actually reconnect the building rather than isolate it. Some kind of terminal maybe? I'm not sure...

Alex Gryger said...

its crazy that they would build a sub-station that looks like that...I mean, think about what a modern sub-station looks like