Crit Notes

February 6, 2007

Two-Week Sketch Problem Crit Notes:

Zack

- Your project seems to have elemental tones, earth, air, fire, and water. Perhaps look at this a bit more.
- How does your new program interact with the existing program? You are inviting the public on to grand that they have long been denied access to. Does this inform how you look at the programs? You could look at the program both in general and specific terms. In other words maybe the program can both serve as a general memorial for remembrance and reflection to the unknown dead buried on the island while it also works for personal mourning.
- Where does your proposal stand in relation to the contemporary burial practices of various cultures and religions? Also look at the history of cemeteries as social spaces, particularly Greenwood Cemetery.
-The bird(s) may have become a symbol for your project. How do they affect the experience of the program? However, with the idea of holes for birds and holes for people, you may have found the dead bird because it intuitively had something to do with your project. Bird=flight=transcendence
-The columbarium could have a certain architectural sentience as it changes over time because it fills with bodies.
-Considering an architectural choreography of death/mourning, write a clear sequence of experience for visitors through each of the three programs: both in time and space. While you could continue to look at all three programs you could also choose to focus on the one that is most “architecturally significant” and uses the whole site.
-If you find a condition on parts of the island where erosion reveals bodies, is there a long-term implication for your architecture? As I understand it, the tendency in our cultural environment is to bury people in perpetuity. It may be possible that in the future, your architecture is on the shore, eroding into the water. It raises issues of temporality, especially in terms of burial. Maybe in addressing the current condition of erosion you can somehow allude to what may be the ultimate future for the whole island.

Chris

-How are the reflected images physically shifted in scale (magnification, etc)?
-Why did you pick 7 World Trade Center as a site? Putting a Target in your program, on this site, makes a rather ironic pun, even if you did not realize it.
-There is also a link between your elevator project and the significance of elevators in the World Trade Center disaster. Stealth occupancy and memorial in relationship.
-Does your project address the social/business hierarchy of office culture and how view is assigned based on the hierarchy.
-Don’t call the project a memorial. Why this office tower? How does the mirror play a part in choosing the site? An office tower is a “non-location.” It is everywhere and nowhere. There is an elevator in the middle of a glass box that has no identity, but the views provided by the mirrors begin to provide reference. “I am no where but I am in relation to _____.”
-Overall, take a stronger position and also take advantage of the section and the frame (or lack thereof).

Bryan Plust

-Sounds in the hangar change through out the day because it is flooded by tidal water that changes level. This is interesting to look at because in this instance a change in sound signifies some kind of event (the changing water levels) and many times the perpetual users of machinery don’t particularly listen to the sound of the machinery, only different sounds made by the machinery that indicate that something is not working correctly.
-How are resonators incorporated into your program, a sound park and factory?
-Extend the sound sequence of the program throughout the entire site.
-Consider the soundscape of the site both as a composition, a linear progression, but also as a field with multiple possibilities. How do you map soundscape as a field of conditions?

Brian Jones

-You are layering multiple simultaneous sensations and proposing that switches (synaesthesia) can occur between them.
-The existing structure on the site is an architectural cladding that allows for human access to the switch. You relate the crackling of paint chips under your feet to the crackling of electricity in a switch.
-Fragmented spaces play off each other in a mega structure and linking them builds overall understanding. You are looking for the one fragment that you encounter from all the others: the key to piecing together and understanding all the fragments. You are looking for the angel from your Rome/Castel Sant’ Angelo project and used the fan spinning in the wind as an example, but be careful because while maybe it is omnipresent, it is really only encountered once in the film of the site, as far as I noticed, whereas the angel sculpture in Castel Sant’Angelo really is omnipresent (I made sure to look for it when I went myself).
-The building is arranged as spaces for humans around a mechanism. The theater replaces the existing mechanism.
-As a destination, people could be shuttled here from the city, though a shuttle train may not speak strongly of the idea of switching. Why do people go here?
-Be careful that rerouting existing infrastructure in order to support “dying infrastructure” does not become too much of a stretch.
-Do you walk from the PATH station and can this be part of the experience of going to your program? Brian, you know my Hadrian’s Villa story. (For those who don’t, the short, short version is that I hiked to Hadrian’s Villa from the train station in Tivoli. It is 4-5 miles each way over a significant change in elevation and highly experiential. Of my three trips to Hadrian’s Villa, this one was by far the best.)
-Circuitry is a metaphor for you. Let it go temporarily and look at bigger issues such as nailing down your program. How many people need to come to the site to make it a big enough destination?
-Remember your sketch problem and think of the bench as a theater.

Jon

-The project seems to be based on re-casting Grant based on details of his biography that you know and the rest of us have to take your word for it on this topic. The narrative is compelling but currently lacks architectural meat.
-If you are going to propose inserting a program under Grant’s tomb, it needs to work within the rules of reality. What is the ground like? What are the structural implications of undermining the monument? How is this structure detailed? Draw the monument in a real site section and not as a singular object.
-“You are too clever for your own good.”
-“Are you going to be like Piranesi or make a real project?”
-“Your entombed in your own ideas in Grant’s tomb.”
-Look at other programmatic strategies, possibilities, and opportunities. Key to this is looking critically at the site and its section.

Matthew

-Institutions tend to objectify the individuals within them, but synaesthesia could provide an oneiric experience in the institution that overcomes this tendency.
-There is sensitivity in the project that tends to not come across in the more “architectural” renditions of it. Perhaps you should draw more with charcoal. Its looseness may be closer to your own thinking and the material has a rawness and natural quality that connects better to the children.
-Being that you build sculptures to express ideas you don’t seem to have words for, it would probably be better for you to design through modeling, which is a process influenced by sensitivity to touch and materiality.

Kyung Sic

-Consider a relation between your program and the obelisk in its original location.
-The program is that you look at art while you jog. When you present the project, try to focus more on the relation of money through the park to the art you are looking at rather than explaining the minute details of how the paths affect the way people move.
-In building a project next to or as an addition to the Met, you need also to critique the architecture of the existing building, especially in terms of how people move through the Met.
-I noticed that again you were talking about your project “controls” the way people move throw it, which is something you have talked about before and were critiqued that you have to be very careful when you talk about “controlling” people with architecture. Perhaps it is a subtly of language. In the context of public architecture not specifically meant to control people (a security check point is an example of architecture that specifically controls people) you really want to provide opportunities and suggestions for how your program should be occupied rather than “control.” As a note as too riding a bike through your program, maybe the part of the project that should slow one down are the pieces of art that you want to look at rather than the shape of the path. Though if you want to, the bike path may have to include some sort of obstacle the rider actually has to dismount in order to negotiate. I ride a bike a lot in the city and while it doesn’t happen often, there are times when I encounter obstacles that require me to dismount and walk my bike. When I cross the Pulaski Bridge to ride to my site, I dismount in the middle of the bridge to walk over the expansion joint, which looks like it could probably damage my tires. Also, I generally walk my bike over open grate bridges because it’s dangerous and extremely uncomfortable on a bike with thin tires.

Dave

-Is the program for the residents of the block or is it for the public? Is it advertised or is it like a speak easy that you have to know about?
-There is an issue with adjacencies that seem to occur without strong relationships. Push these relationships. Perhaps the garden and the bath complex cross over and are thought of more as one element rather than two.
-The baths are well placed in found space but the laundromats are aggressively placed into existing programs without strong justification. Since the site is essentially the found, left over space of the block it may make more sense to work entirely within the found space.
-The project needs to have stronger vertical relationships as it pops out of the ground.

Ahn

-The program appropriates public space, but it does give space back to the public, or at least has the opportunity to do so.
-Synaesthesia can be thought of as simultaneous sensations and the project intends to declare or amplify these simultaneities.
-The study model is a good start and the adjacencies have been sensitively developed, but it is not yet architecture. For the next step, push the model to a higher level of specificity that makes it architecture and not just space. The fragmentary model also presents a strong way to work.
-Go back to early interest with the scrim imbedded in the section, which could be rediscovered in the newest scheme.

Namtip

-It is exciting to rethink the institution of the museum. The proposal takes a the idea of the museum and makes it accessible to both the sighted and non-sighted, rather than just making a project that caters to one or the other exclusively.
-Although, right now the threshold between the park and the city seems to be primarily visual (or is it). Clarify the qualities of this threshold.
-The sequence of sensations needs to be more precise and considered. In a sense, you are working both as an architect and as a curator. You may want to go back to the idea of picking a series of specific art works to include in the museum and choose them based on the ability to translate their content into non-visual experience (tactility, sound, atmosphere, etc).
-You were asked why the project is sited the way it is. Maybe a site drawing could clarify your intentions or maybe reveal a better site placement. Maybe quickly look at a couple other schemes.
-Right now the project is almost a non-building and it could be a park, but it could also be an interior, or both.