Chad Greenlee
This project began by using the “redux” strategy. Which in general terms literally means a revival. My collaborator Alex Stagge and I started our research by looking at Peter Cooks’ project titled “Arcadia”. Cook discusses the project in an interview where he describes his departure point for the project.
“I set it to six user types. One couple were kind of tough, young malicious, New York types. Another couple were glitzy, trendy, very superficial, hedonistic type. Another couple were old retired Viennese with a lot of memories and culture. Another couple were sort of Mr. & Mrs. typical with a mini-car at the time of the common car with two children, the correct amount of children, wearing gum boots and trainers, just regular. And there was a part for romantic, escapist, dreamy and poetic people; they lived in the marsh land and did fishing & hydroponic gardening. And yes, there was another group, very regular, playing cricket and with suburban values.”
- Peter Cook
Through Cook’s investigation of stereotypes, a project is formed. Moving forward a decision was made to investigate the concept of the stereotype, not applied to people, but applied to buildings, and more specifically to what we know as contemporary architectural icons. A selection of icons are broken down into groups, then categorized by particular stereotyped surface conditions. The “drawing surface” is represented by Daniel Libeskinds’ Jewish Museum. The “structural surface” is represented by Koolhaas’ CCTV. The “parametric surface” is represented by Jesse Reisers’ 0-14 Tower.
The “suggestive surface” is represented by Koolhaas’ Casa De Musica. The “diagrammatic surface” is represented by Koolhaas’ Seattle Public Library
These icons are then abstracted, the surface conditions are reimagined to fill the volume of the iconic form. From this process the stereotyped facades have transformed into programmable spaces. The icon has recreated itself, although they are recognizable, the new spatial conditions are inventions of their own.
After studies on multiple icons, our strategy was to move forward with the process by developing one of the originally selected icons. We chose to move forward with Koolhaas’ Seattle Public Library. There was something about the “egg crate” quality that became quite interesting. There were interesting moments where the datum became broken and dismantled at the perimeter of the form. While these different moments were created on the exterior, the interior performed in a very regulatory manor. The idea of the icon becomes reinvestigated, and we began to think of this new Seattle Public Library form as the container, or lattice work for a self-contained city. The interior of the form became a study of aggregation, no program is specified, but it can be easily improvised or visualized. Using the original datum of the diamond form, different clusters, patterns, and spatial qualities were created by using this repetitive form. The project developed through the different investigations of scale, different sized diamond forms were implemented for use on the interior. The new use of scale suggest that the smaller size may be more related to the human scale, which helps the viewer to begin to create their own ideas on what the program may be.
The concept of the self-contained city, or in a more grotesque view, the inescapable icon, needed a more provocative representation than the typical plan and section. The concepts behind the drawings and diagrams were developed from two films. The first being the 2008 film “Synecdoche, New York” directed by Charlie Kaufman with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the lead role. The film is described as “the story of an ailing theatre director who develops an increasingly elaborate stage production whose extreme commitment to realism begins to blur the boundaries between fiction an reality”. The second film directed by Charles & Ray Eames titled “Powers of Ten”. The opening scene shows a couple enjoying a picnic by the lake in downtown Chicago, zooming out by magnitudes of ten the film quickly has extended the view to the outer edges of the universe. The film then reverses, and zooms itself back into the couple enjoying their picnic. The film then zooms into the couple by magnitudes of ten, where the final scene is shot inside a proton of carbon within a DNA Molecule in a white blood cell. The drawings and diagrams are displayed in a series format, continuously zooming into a new particular area of interest. As you are taken through the series of drawings the program remains undefined and gestural, but the sense of scale becomes more clear and defined.
