To make the 2 dimensional map, I extracted building footprints (sorted by date of completion) and placed them on a background which called out the campus grid and the topography of Observatory Hill. This juxtaposition immediately draws one’s eye to the point of intersection and prompts one to consider both when planning and designing space in those zones.

After the mapping exercise, we then turned to modeling our findings. Though part of the exercise was just to keep us engaged with the act of making, it was also asking us to understand how a model might say different things from a flat image. Modeling has been my albatross since the beginning of my time at UVA. I am comfortable with a pen and paper, with a mouse but the combination of materials seemed to me to be more trouble than benefit. The model I created was basically a less-flat version of my map, but only using the contours and the grid. Perhaps the most important moment of the model is the twisting and deformation of the grid at the point of intersection. Though the model was fairly “dumb” in retrospect, it did at least allow me in subsequent presentations to neatly summarize Observatory Hill’s position in the larger landscape. I continue to try to push the role of modeling in my projects, to make them say as much to me and the critics as a drawing or a map.

What better project to start with than the most recent? In the MLA first semester studio with instructor Nancy Takahashi, we explored several themes. First, was the art of making. We learned how to spend time with materials while modeling, learning that the process can be generative of new ideas instead of just final representation. We also explored the human scale of experience through collage, video, and installation (more on that in subsequent posts) as well as in our 2d and 3d representation.

The project I am including in this post is the final of several smaller exercises given throughout the semester. The site is a water treatment plant on the side of Observatory Hill, a wooded, semi-forgotten set of hills on the western edge of UVA’s campus. Nancy asked us to imagine to reimagine the water treatment plant as a publicly accessible greywater treatment facility and to use this as a point of insertion for several new dormitories.

Conceptual Diagram for Fall 2010 Final Project

Basically, the large idea behind my project was to create a “hard” and a “soft” armature which circumnavigated the treatment center, preserving the odd but beautiful forest already on the site. Because time was limited, I concentrated on fleshing out the “hard” or more urban armature through sectional, plan, and model studies which I include below.

Though I had participated in master planning projects before during my planning education, there was always a level of detail that was unresolved. Never did we tackle scales of 1:8 or even 1:50 because that was “where the architect takes over.” Well. I guess it was time I tackled that.

Hard Armature Diagram

And the plan . . .

Here are a series of study perspectives, exploring how one might encounter the path of greywater as it spills down the hill.

And a few images of the model I made, using the laser cutter and the woodshop, to investigate the spatial qualities of the “hard” armature.

In my first semester studio project, the Borderlands were part of my site. During our research and analysis, we spent most of our times pouring over maps, reports, historical accounts, GIS data, excel charts, and previous plans, attempting to understand a place. It was a scattershot effort. One emerged knowing a little bit of everything. We then immediately ended our analysis and started developing our interventions. Mine was a residential neighborhood that had most of the buzzwords: mixed-use, pedestrian-scaled, etc. However, what I did not have was an understanding of how all these layers wove back into the site. I tried to take a few pictures for my “existing conditions” analysis but they showed little individually, and amounted to little more as a collection. Through this class, I have began to understand how these layers of information can be matched to my personal experience in a site. By intentionally wandering through my site with the camera, I was able to concentrate on what was in front of me, what existed, and how I could use photography to say something larger about the site itself.

The reading by Galen Rowell was a big moment for me. His ruminations on the role of light stunned me and made me rethink how I relate to my environment. When I read that nothing would have color or shape without light, I learned nothing I had not previously known, but reading it in conjunction with Rowell’s photography made me understand on a deeper level. It made me rethink how I took pictures. It made me rethink how I thought of material and form. It made me rethink how humans receive information, make spatial connections and relationships, and elevate those into meaning. The revelation—that light has meaning—followed me throughout the course and caused me to think about other senses, especially sound.

Though I learned much from our conversations with Anne and each other, I learned the most from looking.  Whether the projected pictures were excellent or nothing particularly special (and we all had both kinds), I learned most about the relationship between distillation and complexity. We talked so much about what made a picture a photograph versus a “postcard image.” Though we never arrived at an explicit answer (and I wonder if there is one), I am more acutely aware of which pictures I take are really special. Though I was initially frustrated by Joel Meyerowitz’s vague, nebulous description of how he photographs, I think I now understand why he spoke the way he did. It is trained knowledge through exploration and experience, not a list of rules, that make an excellent photographer.

severed. time. passing. covering. revealing. forgetting. blocking. reclaiming. revise. reation entropy. weathering. rebuild. restore. play. trashed. broken. shattered. filled. left. leaving. returning. fencing out. hostility. movement. storage. waiting room. metal glass. asphalt. rust. salt. encroach. overshadow. overgrowth. forget. exposed. waves colliding. trucks moving. rumble. whir. crackle and buzz. you are not welcome. urbs. wire. crater. razors and barbs. plastic. wind. stripped. towers. collapse. build. paradox. collision. burial. remission.

I had already written an ambient piece full of delay, feedback and drawn out chords. I spent some time deciding who the voice of the singer would represent. Looking over my journals, I realized that I often felt there were two voices in this landscape: industry and residential, old and new, large and small. These often competing voices create a landscape cacophony in the borderlands, a melange of confused narrative. If there was one central theme that joined these paradoxical relationships, it was time. How to represent this?  I decided to write a duet between these twin forces which ends in a unison verse about time’s effect on the landscape. I am continuing to struggle with what these voices are. Initially, I wrote them as the voice of industry and the voice of the people, but I’m afraid that might be too literal and specific. I’m in the process of making the voice more about paradox than any single individual. More about dueling words and images, than industry versus residential.

The difficulty is matching these up to my pictures in a way that isn’t literal or simplistic, but still is emotionally complex…

However, I realized that the intention can come from the photographer as much as it can from a designer. The photographer, through their lens, suggests relationships, guides the eye to consider elements it might miss. For example, I came upon a piece of a tree branch that had grown through the fence of a truck lot. It was severed on both ends, impaled on the chain link. It is my job as the photographer to observe such anomalies. By framing it between the trucks, it speaks of a industrial site divorced and at odds with a natural past. I was asked by an employee at the lot what the fuck I was doing. I told him I was photographing for a class and he just smiled, shook his head, and walked away. Would he have the same reaction if he saw the picture? If it was elevated beyond daily experience? This is what I try to do when photographing: elevating the overlooked.