Auther: Wittgenstein
"Frame within a frame" "Frame (the movie) within a frame (the theatre)"

"the main intervention may be the bridge, secondary interventions may occur from various distance to present that which frames, to be framed from the distance to present how we may see our environment."

= "Network ways of "knowing""

Questions: What are you identifying, creating?

Are you criticizing or are you making a positive of it?-Lidiya

How is someone who is driving (something mechanical) to remember those actions that reminds him that he is human?-Lidiya

Create a juxtaposition against the mode of driving, in order to reawaken the senses.
Ex: To be driving within a repetitive environment (which causes you to turn off your senses) and then be interjected with a seen action (walking) which awakens your memory to these actions.

Ex. Howard Franklin Bridge: As I drive for 40 minutes across the Howard Franklin bridge, the mechanical feeling of the car and of driving, makes me forget that I am human. When I see from the distance, that someone is walking, running, swimming, skipping, talking, standing, wandering, conversing I am reminded that I am human and with this, an onslaught of memory floods my thought, awakens me from my short slumber.

Susan:

Howard Franklin is an Edge Condition much like flying in an airplane, a train... it's about getting from one point to another (the destination), not about the journey.

5/5: Site?

4/4: Program

Program Statement:

In realizing a proper spatial intervention that will bring clarity to the senses that define our mental image of place, the elicited experiential sense produced by the propose design will root from the experiences made to exist by the presence of vehicular infrastructure. The condition of experiencing space as a linear sequential reveal of landscape and architecture will act as the existing mode of experience to give cause to the formal and spatial quality of the propose design. Within the mechanical experience of driving, what the architecture will attempt to do is interject a piece of humanity against the hollow experience induced by driving. The moment of perceptual juxtaposition will act as the window of which place is defined; reintroducing place as something to be distinguished, to be explored on a tangible level in order to bring spatial distinction. Thus the design looks to create a phenomenal interruption between specific points of movement, in order to realign the senses of the experiencing self back to the physical plane.

Program Considerations:

What accumulates into this specific point of perceptual disruption will be the result of several elements that will direct the design. These elements include but are not limited to; ones preconceived conception of the driven infrastructure, the physical composition of the driven space that causes the senses to be less susceptible to the environment, and finally, the experiential juxtaposition that will pull the experiencing self back into a state of conscious sensibility.

The stigma that has been cast upon these infrastructures is that they disconnect landscapes, constricting sight and movement while being a thing for movement. As there is already a subconsciously inscribe understanding attach to these infrastructures, a sensible implementation should run along the grains of what is prior understandings in order to formulate the proper functions deemed necessary. Specifically as these infrastructure coincides with the notion of movement and connectivity, than it is such that movement and connectivity must be fluent throughout the design; of which will allow the propose space to be accessible and approachable from various viewpoints. Positioning the the design within the foundation of preexisting beliefs, will furthermore allow for such a design to read into the landscape without becoming an intrusive object that is instead alienated into disregarded existence.

The perceptual disruption must also rely on the immediately visible context of the driven space to the extent that what exist will aid formally into that which is proposed. The repetitive appearance of specific elements within the driven space that dulls the senses into passivity must be accounted for in order to conceptualize a counter weight of which pulls the experiencing self back into the physical realm. Awareness of these existing elements will help to blend the design into the existing moment of transition and fluidity that occurs at the surface of the road, without leaving those experiencing the space disoriented or distracted as they transition through.

Jux:

Hard Landscape in Concrete By:Michael Gage and Maritz Vandenberg

"Cities consist of buildings. But, equally important, they consist of the connective web of open space between those buildings, linking them and interpenetrating their interiors.The art of urban landscape lies in manipulating these external spaces so as to form a continuous yet varied urban landscape that is both functionally sensible and aesthetically satisfying" (Gage, 5).

"It is helpful to think of cities as consisting of two kinds of external space- paths and places.
Paths cater for movement. They enable us to get from where we are to where we want to be. They must not only facilitate physical movement (by vehicle or on foot), but tey must also help us to orient ourselves, guide us and help us find out way. By 'paths' we mean the roads, pavements, alleys, lanes, footways, steps and ramps which form our routes through the urban web.
Places, on the other hand, are the nodes where movement comes to stop. They are the parks, squares, courtyards, gardens and (at the smallest end of the scale) sitting areas where we can work, play, rest, or chat with friends.
The division of urban space into paths and places is not, of course, clear-cut- the two function is usually primary and the other secondary, and this influences design" (Gage, 7).

"Moving through the city, the urban dweller therefore traverses a series of paths each of which has a sequence of places strung along its length like beads on a string. The aim of landscape design should be to realise the latent character of each path and place to the full, bringing out its unique possibilities, and exploiting contrasts in function, scale, and character. Ideally, a 'plastic experience' - a journey through a sequence of pressures and vacuums, constraints and reliefs, exposures and enclosures as the pedestrian or passenger moves from teh constriction of the alley to the wideness of the square, from the containment of the street to the sudden relevation of the fly-over, in a constantly changing series of the emargentviews" (Gage, 8).
EXAMPLE: Liverpool & Grand Union Canal, London

8-12 64-74

"It is probable that some highway and motorway-building will continue for the foreseeable future (even if at a reduced scale), and the urgent issue for landscapers is how to improve their design. The examples shown in this section demonstrate that when they are constructed in sympathy witht eh local landscape they can be visually successful; and provided they are built as part of a balanced private/public transportation plan, with due regard to noise and air pollution problems, and social needs, they can make a positive contribution to the built environment. There is no reason in principle why urban highways cannot be used as positive design elements in reshaping the social and economic problems created by their construction. (Gage, 64)"

2/2: An understanding of Experiences and an Experience

First to understand the intended experience that is to be derived from the propose architectural intervention, there must be an understanding of experiences as they exist in the now, between perceiver and environment, as well as how they are represented within the context of the subject of the thesis. For this, we reference John Dewey in Art as Experience in which he discusses the experience in which is live continuously, sometimes unnoticed and experience as they exist under realization to be recognized as an experience (Dewey 37). The composition of driver and an environment that presents itself to be unchanging at least within the realm of what is immediately seen by the driver and that which is too far to be realized to be changing, can fall into the category of general experiences. In such case, "things are experienced but not in such a way that they are composed into an experience" (Dewey, 36). This general experience is anchored by repetitive visuals confined within edges that distance the personal interaction between driver and city and thus does not allow for an experience outside of general experiences to occur. Such an experience of experiences occurs through distraction and dispersion of which allows "the material experienced" to run "its course to fulfillment. (Dewey, 36)" John Dewey further clarifies by stating that "life is no uniform uninterrupted march or flow. It is a thing of histories, each with its own inception and movement toward its close, each having its own particular rhythmic movement; each with its own unrepeated quality pervading it throughout" (Dewey, 37).

Experience as it occurs infinitely within the physical transaction of "live creature and environing conditions," is not as much desired in this case as one that arises by means of extraneous interruptions (Dewey, 36). These interruptions will allow for moments of pause and place of rest in order that within movement, distinction is allowed to occur, further defining the quality of space within context of place. Furthermore, the interruptions helps to indicate that the fluidity of space constantly moving pass the onlooker is not representative of the character of place, that cities and homes are not, within the compass of one's own understanding, uniformly organized but rather fragmented by the cities character, historical relevance, and site specific experiences. There must be a point of interruption, in which the experiencing self recognizes these separation of characteristic within the city landscape. The articulation of the in articulated will inscribe a sense of distinction in place, of which will provoke the mind to see beyond the distance that separates the bodily being from the context of the city and in turn offer a sense of closure that otherwise remains fragmented by one's physical distance from the tangible environment that they transition through.

The View from the Road By: Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch, John R. Myer

The View from the Road
By: Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch, John R. Myer

“The modern car interposes a filter between the driver and the world he is moving through. Sounds, smells, sensations of touch, and weather are all diluted in comparison with what the pedestrian experiences. Vision is framed and limited, the driver is relatively inactive. He has less opportunity to explore, or choose his path with than does the man on foot. Only the speed, scale, amd grace of his movement can compensate for these limitations.” (Appleyard, 4)
“If consciously designed for the purpose, they could present the city as a vivid and well ordered image.” (Appleyard, 16)

“The image of the highway itself may also be clarified. Successive sections may be visibly differentiated so that they can be recognized in distinct parts. Thus the motorist can see that he is “in the hilly part,” as well as “approaching center.” (Appleyard, 16)

“Even where the general image of the city and the highway have been clarified and their interrelation established, there still remains the difficult task of linking the road to its immediate environs. This is most crucial where the driver is about to make the transition to the local landscape of streets and buildings. The highway and the city street are two separate worlds, mysteriously connected, and coming off the ramp of a modern highway is usually a moment of severe disorientation.” (Appleyard, 16)

Comments:

Design = not universal, will lend to sense of homogeneity... will this then cause lack of character within specific site. They become inarticulate through homogeniety

Chapter to the sensorial experience / examination of conscious / conjecture of how this may play out / process of emotions= poetically descriptive

A design to change throughout the day, to change through movement.

1/1: Thesis Clarified

The existence of the automobile allowed for urban landscapes to be carved, arranged, and segregated into episodic moments of experiential happening. The result of which has transposed the experiencing corporeal being from the tangible edge of the city, to a displaced position behind the framed enclosure of the automobile. Any moments of intimate interaction once occurring at the front of the city are now compressed into momentary visuals placed either at a distance or within close enough proximity to constantly slip from visual limits. Though the experience of perceiving architecture and urban landscape is brought into a unique viewpoint, such experiences within the moving body of a car never lingers long enough to create personal attachment or even notice from the onlooker. Thus the question is how and to what degree architecture may act upon the senses to awaken them from the confines of these edge conditions.

Framed within the car, the image of the city, place, and home becomes "flattened out, confined to a surface" by one's inability to make tangible interaction, which would permit depth to be reinserted back into one's experiential happening (Lefebvre, 313). With these gained perceptions, the development of urban landscape begins to address that which is perceived through the automobile, rather than through immediate bodily interaction of the pedestrian. Sense of place in turn becomes the product of the perceived, in which the depth of one's own sensorial experience is minimized into perceptible obscurity. As such environments facilitate our demand for prompt passage between destinations, edge conditions arise from them, bounding our bodies, governing movement, highlighting points of destination while simultaneously obscuring our journey in between travels. To counter the effects of detaching sensorial experiences, the thesis seeks to understand some specific role that architecture may undertake to counter the crisis of place.

What then must we ask of our architecture in order that these senses may be reawakened to the presence of place? Amongst these lines of movement that pinpoint beginnings and ends, but never bringing our attention to the middle, by which these bounding edges transform our city, home, and place into the background in which movement takes the stage. Accordingly, an interruption that juxtaposes the mechanical experience of driving with that which is within the compass of human experiences may lend to an engagement that breaches the edges of confined flux, in order that sense of place can be reframed within the mental scope of personal understanding. A moment of interruption will act to awaken the senses and reaffirm memory of place in order that the essence of place can be reestablished within its cultural and physical context.

Walls Have Feelings: Architecture, Film and the City By: Katherine Shonfield

Euclidian Space:
An essential property of a Euclidean space is its flatness. Other spaces exist in geometry that are not Euclidean. For example, the surface of a sphere is not; a triangle on a sphere (suitably defined) will have angles that sum to something greater than 180 degrees. In fact, there is essentially only one Euclidean space of each dimension, while there are many non-Euclidean spaces of each dimension. Often these other spaces are constructed by systematically deforming Euclidean space. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_space)

Chapter 6: Against the City of Objects: Our Mutual Friend, Mary Poppins, L.A. Story

"Euclidean space... is literally flattened out, confined to a surface... The person who sees and knows only how to see, the person who draws and knows only how to put marks on a sheet of paper, the person who drives around and knows only how to drive a car- all contribute in their way to the mutilation of a space which is everywhere sliced up... the driver is concerned only with himself to his destination and in looking about sees only what he needs to see for that purpose; he thus perceives only his route, which has been materialised , mechanised, and technicised and he sees it from one angle only - that of its functionality: speed, readability in mind amounts to a sort of pleonasm, that of 'pure' and illusory transparency. Space is defined in this context in terms of the perception of an abstract subject, such as the driver of a motor vehicle, equipped with a collective common sense, namely the capacity to read the symbols of the highway code, and with a sole organ- the eye- placed in the service of his movement within the visual field. Thus, space appears solely in its reduced forms. Volume leaves the field to surface and any overall view surrenders to visual signals spaced out along fixed trajectories already laid down in the 'plan'. An extraordinary- indeed unthinkable, impossible- confusion gradually arises between space and surface, with the latter determining a spatial abstract space eventually becomes the simulacrum of a full space... Travelling- walking or strolling about - becomes an actually experienced, gestural simulation of the formerly urban activity encounter, of movement amongst concrete existences." (Lefebvre, 313)( The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre)

Chapter 3: Having an Experience

"so that the whole body may respond"

Art as Experience
by: John Dewey



Chapter 3: Having an Experience



Two Forms of Experience



"Experience occurs continuously, because the interaction of live creature and environing conditions is involved in the very process of living. ... Oftentimes, however, the experience had is inchoate (being only partly in existence or operation). Things are experienced but not in such a way that they are composed into an experience." (Dewey, 36)

"In contrast with such experience, we have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences. ... Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self sufficiency. It is an experience." (Dewey, 37)

Empiricism:
In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know "things," part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "the Theory of Knowledge". Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas (except in so far as these might be inferred from empirical reasoning, as in the case of genetic predisposition).[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism)

Perception and Reality
Just as one object can give rise to multiple percepts, so an object may fail to give rise to any percept at all: if the percept has no grounding in a person's experience, the person may literally not perceive it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_perception)

Haptic perception is the process of recognizing objects through touch.
Haptic perception is active exploration
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_perception)

Haptic communication is the means by which people and other animals communicate via touching. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_communication)

"Because of continuous merging, there are no holes, mechanical junctions, and dead centers when we have an experience. There are pauses, places of rest, but they punctuate and define the quality of movement. ... Continued acceleration is breathless and prevents parts from gaining distinction." (Dewey, 38)

"We yield according to external pressure, or evade and compromise. There are beginnings and cessations, but no genuine initiations and concluding. One thing replaces another, but does not absorb it and carry it on. There is experience, but so slack and discursive that it is not an experience. Needless to say, such an experiences are anesthetics." (Dewey, 41)

"Thus the non-esthetic lie within two limits. At one pole is the loose succession that does not begin at any particular place and that ends-in the sense of ceasing- at no particular place. At the other pole is arrest, constriction, proceeding from parts having only a mechanical connection with one another. There exist so much of one and the other of these two kinds of experience that unconsciously they come to be taken as norms of all experience." (Dewey, 42)

"All emotions are qualifications of a drama and they change as the drama develops. Persons are sometimes said to fall in love at first sight. But what they fall into is not a thing of that instant. What would love be were it compressed into a moment in which there is no room for cherishing and for solicitude? The intimate nature of emotion is manifested in the experience of one watching a play on the stage or reading a novel. It attends the development of a plot; and a plot requires a stage, a space wherein to develop and time in which to unfold. Experience is emotional but there are no seperate things called emotions in it" (Dewey, 43).

"The experience ios of material fraught with suspense and moving toward its own concummation through a connected series of varied incidents" (Dewey, 44)

"There are, therefore, common patterns in various experiences, no matter how unlike they are to one another in the details of their subject matter. There are conditions to be met without which an experience cannot come to be. The outline of the common pattern is set by the fact that every expoerience is the result of interaction between a live creature and some aspect of the world in which he lives. ... But interaction of teh two constitues the total experience that is had, and the close which completes it is the institution of a felt harmony.
An experience has pattern and structure, because it is not just doing and undoing in alteration, but consists of them in relationship. ... The action and its consequence must be joined in perception" (Dewey, 46)

"a building that will elicit an experiential sense."

Thao,

As for the progression of your project, I am less concerned with the specifics of 'building' or 'type' as I am with your ability to express, understand, and write about what you are attempting to accomplish. This is the perfect time to begin to research, write and think; if you are fretting about programming for your project, I think you have to realize that 'programming' for you will be the 'what,' 'why,' and 'how' of the phenomenological experience, and not so much the particular building. Are you familiar with the works of Merleau-Ponty? His Phenomenology of Perception might be helpful, but it also is a tad technical (philosophically speaking). Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Thought might also be of interest to you - not necessarily in that it directly correlates with film, but in that it discusses an art form and how it can act as a catalyst for human experience, catharsis, and change.

The idea of creating an architecture that elicits collective perception is an interesting one, but not one that is necessarily possible or provable. I think it is an idea that is worth exploring, but I'm not sure how you can go about creating such collective experiences; that is both the beauty and mystery of experience: you and I can be present in the same movie/space/concert/where ever and have two entirely discrete and discordant experiences. Perhaps you can say that your aim is to create a building that will elicit an experiential sense, but I am not sure that you can say more than that.

Don't worry about whether this will seem more like an installation. Just move forward researching and trying to find spaces that bring about such 'sensorial experiences'

Another book that might be helpful. I've never read it, but it looks interesting. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience

Stephen Szutenbach

Stephen,

I absolutely agree with the comment about collective experience, more so when I speak about collective perception, I think what I mean to say is that though everyone is certainly open to walking away with different interpretation of what may have just been perceived, what is more important is that they are put within the realm of others, in which collectively everyone is able to be aware of the same thing, rather or not that triggers a different response isn't necessarily something I am focusing on, what is more important is how that collective act, even for a second, may be able to inscribe our sense of place, moment, or community. For example, as a reference to my past, I am thinking about when I went to see firework shows during 4th of July. My parents would take us every year, it would be at the same beach, same set up in the park, and even when we're surrounded by hundreds of people, our actions, rather we were conversating or cooking up food, allowed us to feel fairly detach from the crowd. The same circumstances seemed to hold true for everyone, as everyone was coming from various distance, with different background, history, and experiences. However to whatever background you may have come from, at the moment of collective perception, past and future is forgotten in order to recognize the moment, and in this case, the first firework to ignite allowed everyone to break from there current activity to be drawn into a mode of collective perception. Its this very moment that I hope to eventually convey in my spatial set up. So I feel my studies will be based around that very moment and act of percieving and not necessarily around the reaction in which that which was perceived has begun to affect us long after.

Perhaps calling it an act of collective experience is the wrong way to go about it and perhaps its as you have said "a building that will elicit an experiential sense."

Thao

Case Study 1: Louvre Museum: Jean Nouvel

The opposite forces acting upon each other within the building's two main formal components allows for a unique spatial condition that establishes an experiential enclosure separate from site context. Cohesion of dome and exhibition spaces are done not within the typical formal understanding but rather metaphorically, by the layers of penetrating lights that cast and masks the museum interiors, blending any formal variety into one visual uniformity. As individuals are pulled completely from the site, the experiencing self is immersed completely and fully within the sensorial realm of the architecture. All formal characteristics are blanketed into one collective perception. The minimal gesture of the dome, encompassing the museum, aids in the experiential fluidity and the effects becomes one that pulls the fragmented thoughts of those experiencing the space into one collective understanding.

Case Study 2: Olafur Eliasson

Relational Aesthetics:

Through the conception of aesthetics, one must articulate that which is sociable and community oriented, in order that the experience that is derived would "inscribe a sense of community" (Birnbaum, 133). As a condition that represents relational aesthetics, the architecture must be conceived through the process of discovering what is socially and immediately relatable and understood by the subject (Birnbaum, 133). By referencing the idea of relational aesthetics that is exhibited within artwork of sociable engagements, including that of Olafur Eliasson, one will be able to create an architecture or spatial condition that will represent, produce, or prompt inter-human relations within the experiencing self (Birnbaum, 134). For such relational aesthetics to occur within the social realm as well as physical realm of architecture, the concept must be integrated into a public domain. However public domain does not mean the implementations of parks or plazas, as such public environments still allows for a fairly private experience. What is instead needed is a spatial condition, made to occur within the accessible public realm that allows for moments of collective perception, and further permits what Rosalind Krauss states, an experience that will change "damaged individual experience into energized collective perception." Doing so may bring mediation between the divide of self and place.

Collective Perception:

Collective experiences and activities will bring to order the disjointed sensorial experiences that lends to an overall crisis of place. Amongst the overall understanding of self, and self within the realm of others, one would be able to form as Olafur Eliasson states "him or herself through engagement with the environment" and in turn, engagement within the realm of collective perception.

Eliasson / Heliotrope by: Daniel Birnhaum

RELATIONAL AESTHETICS

"All work of art produce a model of sociability...So there is a question we are entitled to ask in front of any aesthetic production: 'Does this work permit me to enter into dialogue? Could I exist, and how, in the space it defines?" Nicolas Bourriaud (Birnbaum, 133)

*The Distribution of the Sensible by: Jacques Ranciere

""...French philosopher Jacques Ranciere outlines an approach to politics and aesthetics that focus on "the manner in which the arts can be perceived and thought of as forms of art and as forms that inscribes a sense of community." Every artistic articulation involves a distribution of shared experience and is thus a figure of sociability or community. ... The arts, says Ranciere, can "only ever lend to projects of domination or emancipation what they are able to lend to them, that is to say, quite simply, what they have in common with them: bodily positions and movements, functions of speech, the parcelling out of the visible and the invisible." (Birnbaum, 134)

"... aesthetics here should be understood in Kantian terms, as the priori forms determining what presents itself to the sensory experience." -in other words, as the system of delimitations of time and space articulating that which members of a community share. On the basis of this primary aesthetics," Ranciere explores the question of artistic practice- "ways of doing and making" -in order to discover exactly "what they 'do' or 'make' from teh standpoint of what is common to the community." If each work of art produces a form of sociability, it also suggests a model of political life that starts from such immediate and tangible tings as physical location, the position from which one speaks, and teh concrete"parcelling out of the visible and the invisible." (Birnbaum, 134)


Heliotrope by: Daniel Birnhaum

RELATIONAL AESTHETICS cont:

Relational Aesthetics- "an aesthetic theory consissting in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt." (Birnbaum, 134)

"...social exchange is not just a side effect or a backdrop, it is the very center of their work. What they produce, says Bourriaud, are "inter-human experiences" and "relational time-space elements."

In referring to the experiences within Tiravanija's work-

"Things are out there, between the visitors of the exhibition. Collective activities thus precede the introspection of the single subject. A first-person stance emerges only belatedly, when the action is over and one is left to one's own devices." (Birnbaum, 136)

In referring to the experiences within Eliasson's work-

"In Eliasson's case it is usually the other way around. His works inspire a reflective stance, reminding the viewer of his or her own position as an experiencing, bodily being and of the subjective condition of all interactions with the world (and with other embodied subjects)." (Birnbaum, 136)

"All possible experience of the world depends on an experiencing subject, even when the thing being experienced is understood to be independent of the perceiving mind." (Birnbaum, 136)

"To a certain extent you produce the work. But in turn you are produced as a subject by the environments that artists constructs. "It could perhaps be called a relationship of co-production," says Eliasson. "As an example I might say: when someone walks down a street she produces the street and is, simultaneously, produced by the street." Is it the intentionality of the active viewer who enters the work of art and fully explores its most extreme possibilities that determines the limits of what it means to be a subject? Or is it the work itself that defines the parameters of new forms of subjectivity, perhaps involving modes of awareness that dodge the framework of phenomenology? (Birnbaum, 138)

COLLECTIVE PERCEPTION

"Of the "necessary and ultimately liberating" integration of the human subject and the technology of cinema, Rosalind Krauss writes, "Not only was film to release men and women from the confines of their private spaces and into a collective realm... but it was to infiltrate and reconstruct subjectivity itself, changing damaged individual experience into energized collective perception." She cites Benjamin, who obviously saw this reconstruction of subjectivity as a moment of emancipation and compared it the act of breaking out of jail: "Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling."" (Birnbaum, 139)

"What interests me here is not so much the disappearance as a manner of being, but rather the "systems if discontinuities" that represents so many different modes of appearance or emergence. ...he is interested in an empowered self: an active subject capable of forming him- or herself through engagement with the environment." (Birnbaum, 139)

"Time becomes a subject because it is folding of the outside and, as such, forces every present into forgetting, but preserves the whole of the past within memory: forgetting is the impossibility of return, and memory is the necessity of renewal." The ultimate exteriority, the absolute outside cannot be understood in spatial terms, but rather as a temporal dimension. Time affects itself, and through this auto affection it folds, producing interiority: an inner realm of reflexivity. Thus the Outside is twisted, folded, or doubled to create an Inside." (Birnbaum, 140)

RE: "...Engergized Collective Perception." (Eliasson, Birnbaum, 139)

Subjectivity may refer to the specific discerning interpretations of any aspect of experiences. They are unique to the person experiencing them, the qualia that are only available to that person's consciousness. Though the causes of experience are thought to be objective and available to everyone, (such as the wavelength of a specific beam of light), experiences themselves are only available to the subject (the quality of the colour itself).

By creating a collective thought, one will be able to discover there place within the larger context of their city.

"...Engergized Collective Perception." (Eliasson, Birnbaum, 139)

Crisis of place exist because edge conditions exist to pull individuals from fully interacting with their environment, the tangible interactions that is otherwise required to create definition of place. These edges exist as long stretches of highway infrastructure, segregating people from the physical closeness of their city and home, they exist as architecture that is purely anchored by aesthetics, promoting purely perceptual participation and nothing else, they are mental edges created by large spans of divide, placed between us and our neighbors and us and the city, and as a result is responsible for the undeveloped mental image of place. To correct what has become individuals fragments and often individualized understanding of place, a condition must be made available in order that one can enter into a realm of "collective perception" (Birnbaum, 139). The result of such a spatial condition will "release men and women from the confines of their prvate spaces... changing damaged individual experiences into energized collective perception. (Birnhaum, 139).

Consider for example, a movie theatre; the act of watching a movie amongst a hundred or so other participants, is an act of collective perception. Within a few second of the movie, one must fully and completely give themself up to the realm of cinema in order to completely grasp the story line, this is not an act that is just occuring within the confines of one's own mental capacity but rather one that is shared and experienced by others within the theatre. The simple act of shared experiences, allowed for what Walter Benjamin declares as a moment of emancipation that occurs as one reconstructs subjectivity.

Perhaps what needs to occur within concept, is an element of fully engaging experiential happenings that blankets a city, bringing to fruition what is lost in experience by the lack of chemistry that occurs within the architecture, those whom the architecture is meant to interject with experiences, and the overall site that disjoints the architectural experiences into compartmentalized existence. Within these interventions, what exist is left to exist with nothing more than simple enhancements done upon it to bring a further cohesiveness of sensorial experiences.

Ex.1 A purely concept base design of frames that extents and interacts with the built environment.

Ex.2 Various experiential interventions created solely to awaken ones senses of their environment.

Ex.3 A preexisting building is taken and enhanced with elements that will awaken the senses.

Olafur Eliasson: Your Mobile Expectations BMW H2R Project

Case Study Selection

[Case Study1] [Top] Jean Nouvel- Louvre Museum, Abi Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

[Case Study2] [Bottom] Olafur Eliasson (with Gunther Vogt)- Mediated Motion, Bragenz Kunsthaus : Eliasson always includes the visitors to the exhibition, their senses, reflection, memory and their interpretations in his work. By means of their presence, the visitors change the installations, influence the sequence of occurrences and become aware of their perception and of themselves as perceiving. (http://www.galeries.nl/mnexpo.asp?exponr=5009)

Zoomscape: Architecture in Motion and Media by: Mitchel Schwarzer [p2]

"For many critics, the automobile isolates its occupants and turns the built environment into a zone of alienating passage through neutral architectcural infill. ...architectural historian warns that "driving from one theme environment to another, the endless, nondescript blocks of the city disappear." In this perspective, the simple act of driving might someday efface the city-at which point, it is possible no one will mind." (Schwarzer, 78)

"Early in the age of the automobile, however, apart from signs, the roadside had not yet acquired the sprawl of vehicular development. Sharp edes divided urban and rural landscapes. Roads passed through agricultural lands until quite near a town's boundary. For a brief period, because of their mobility, automobiles allowed people to experience contrasts between town and country." (Schwarzer, 81)

"Driving toward a city could feel like an artistic experience. Because of its speed, and because the driver and passengers might focus their attention at certain places, even stopping at special vistas, the car assembles landscapes in an almost painterly way." (schwarzer, 81)

Tampa as the New Las Vegas

perhaps automobiles and architecture should embrace one another. as automobiles frames our place and architecture acts as the piece amongst many that define places, since automobile wont be disappearing soon, perhaps there needs to be an architecture or condition that will be more conscious of the presence of automobiles.

Think Las Vegas (as stated in Zoomscape). The existence of Las Vegas is built on being an environment that captures our sensorial experiences completely... the lights, sounds, the compression of spaces, the energy, the signage.... Las Vegas understands the person within a space, Las Vegas is an image, one that is provoked always and endlessly, rather your standing in a street or in the space, or even within your car, perhaps Downtown Tampa can be alittle more like Las Vegas.

Zoomscape: Architecture in Motion and Media by: Mitchell Schwarzer (p1)

"I have never set foot in scores of buildings, in scores of towns, but they are familiar to me."

"Zoomscape explores the impact of mechanized transportation and camera reproduction on the perception of architecture" (Schwarzer, 12)

"...driving encourages a nonchalant way of looking. Most sights are off to the side, constantly slipping away; the view ahead is dictated less by urban form than roadway roadway space. The aesthetics of the automobile view are shaped by the brief encounter, a quick and potent mix of vision with form that almost instantaneously evaporates. Seen quickly buildings and other urban features metamorphose into supple shapes and receding outlines. The excitement of viewing architecture from an automobile lies in such metamorphoses, which can seem like the transformation of mass into energy." (Schwarzer, 72)

"Changing direction at driver's will, cars navigate the city as far as the roadside goes, showing us architecture from multiple angles and individual perspectives. In cars, trucks, or on motorcycles, people construct an expansive sense of place. Whether on highways, arterials, or collector streets, the vehincular experience encompasses the whole of the metropolis. Automobile encourages an understanding of architecture as landscape instead of landmark; and although they greatly facilitate access to individual landmarks, cars are impatient with stasis and singularity." (Schwarzer, 72)

"The automobile crafts knowledge of architecture on the go, promting a dance-like interplay between observer and building, where buildings continually change and infrastructure usually cuts in." (Schwarzer, 72)

"...any freedom to be gained from the automobile will be achieved only when the motor is turned off. Here the ultimate urban edge, the earth, fromes the edge of both architecture and life. Architecture is made from earth and must return to earth." (Schwarzer, 74)

"...seeing the city from the lanes of the freeway has become the vital option. Leaving your car, you see the urban detritus, the city that the car has made obsolete. And leaving your car, you may lose your life." (Schwarzer, 76)

"For many critics, the automobile symbolizes much that is wrong with cities and especially suburbs... The view from automobiles... is a view onto the world created by the automobile- hence a narcissistic view. For many critics, the automobile isolates its occupants and turns the built environment into a zone of alienating passage through nuetral architectural infill.... the simple act of driving might one day efface the city- at which point, it is possible that no one will mind." (Schwarzer, 78)

Travel as Place Making

Though travel (within contemporary means) is not necessarily the only problem within detaching sensorial experiences, as a lack of depth within architecture itself lends also to the disconnect. I believe travel does however have some take in developing ones mental image of place. For example, if I was to leave my house and travel by foot from St. Petersburg to the school, the very physical connection that attaches me to the ground pulls me into the sensorial experience within the space. My encounters/participation/and communication with the environment forces me to understand the environment to transgress through, this in turn creates a specific sense of place through the journey of physical contact. But however, if I instead chose to take a detour, and travel by automobile than this lends to a different kind of sensorial experience, one that pulls me off the ground and carries me through in a much more quick and fluid manner; minimizing the details and personal encounters that I would otherwise have, to a vast landscape of forms I am only able to perceive. Within automobile travel, there exist a different experience, one that requires attention to the road ahead and behind and not the places that we cross in between. In the end, I feel there is something to say about how one can be wedged between two lanes of traffic and bounded by concrete barriers and light post; making, at no point, any physical contact with the ground we wish to journey through that defines place solely by its full disconnect from place. In turn the lack of tangible experience of place (by automobile), makes for a different definition in place.

Would you say that a disconnecting sensorial connection can be lost to our own swift movements through place?

An Architecture Sensitive to the Automobile

Within what proximity should a designer design his or her spatial condition to be receptive to the human senses? If an experience occurs within immediate visual contact with a built form then maybe architecture, to encompass all depth of ones sensorial experience, must engage us endlessly; rather to the extent that we may be in front of the building or within a car, miles away but in some visual contact. As these man-made edges (highway and street systems) continue to thicken, stretching our visual sight further from the city edge, maybe what is needed in design is a means of spatial engagement when the physicality of the building is too far from reach. However, this does not mean that architecture should scream of its presence but rather be conscious of its presence within the context of the city; as a figure amongst hundreds of others, in the landscape of lights, sounds, and rigid forms.

As these images press within our mind and defines us, they in turn, takes dramatic roles in determining our desire for growth or decay. Should a adaptable architecture then understand the complexities that constantly grows around us, in us, within our world, our cities, home, and place?

Perhaps what is needed is an architecture that is sensitive to how it is perceived within the automobile... not to say at all that this is the only intent but rather perhaps this acts to be an addition included within architecture to create for an overall sensorial experience.

Depth of Condition

We must thicken the depth of these conditions in order to allow engagement that is beyond the perceived. The condition must be one that can be heard, touched, and communicated to. A larger participation must be demanded of the city, home, and place.

Thesis Abstract

The product of modern progress has led us into a crisis of place. Our lives, as they are in constant flux, are confronted by edge conditions that facilitate our demand for prompt passage
between destinations. These edges act to govern movement, highlighting points of destination while simultaneously obscuring our journey in between travels. Because we are in a constant mode of travel and observation, the senses that define place become dormant by our own passivity and reluctance to participate in or communicate with our city. These sensorial experiences are explored only within the realm of what is perceived and thus become the makeup for a rather disconnected image of place. Therefore a condition is needed to awaken the senses and reaffirm memory of place in order that the essence of place can be reestablished within its cultural and physical context. As image occurs through the product of the perceived, the action that is necessary, conceptually speaking, must be a reframing of the image of place. Doing so will thicken the depth of our own sensorial experiences within the condition of place and establish oneself within the bodily as well as mental context of our city, home, and overall environment.

Earlier Thoughts on Film and Architecture

I would ask you to ask what it is about film and how you approach that genre that may have, or is, informing your architecture and sense of place-making. When I asked about memory, it was only because you had mentioned that word...if memory is something that intrigues you as well, then, i would ask: what is it that you are trying to negotiate with memory, film (or cinematic notions of event, as you mentioned what seemed to be prescribed series of events, or scenes) and the making of architecture. The idea of cinema, or more precisely, cinematic events as architecture has been explored a number of times, but what is it that is of particular importance to you and your making(s)? Why did you invest your prior time to cinema/film; what is it about the nature of making a film that continues to intrigue you? Or, is it the final product that provides the impetus for your architecture; the negotiation of the final product by the viewer(s) that informs architectural experiences, details, interrelationships, etc.? how does memory become a part of this, if it does? with or without it, the thesis can become something quite interesting and a successful device for your making(s). Additionally, in terms of your final product, what is it that you ultimately produce and how does it become embedded in the written text?
-susan

Quiet Spaces and Urban Landscape

Missing Pages

The Poetics of Reverie:Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos by: Gaston Bachelard [part 2]

"...drama of childhood... do not disappear, but that they can be reborn, and indeed want to be reborn. Anger lasts; primitive anger awakens the sleeping childhood." (Gaston, 21)

"...confronted with am immensity, the person who is being interrogated seems to be naturally sincere. The site overwhelms poor and fluid social "situations." What great value, then, an album of sites would have for interrogating our solitary being and revealing the world where we must live in order to be ourselves!" (Gasrton, 23)

The Poetics of Reverie:Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos by: Gaston Bachelard

Main Entry: rev·er·ie
1 : daydream2 : the condition of being lost in thought

"The importance of such phenomenological [ a philosophical movement that describes the formal structure of the objects of awareness and of awareness itself in abstraction from any claims concerning existence ] inquires lies in the complete illumination of the awareness of a subject who is struck with wonder by poetic images. This awareness, which modern phenomenology tends to associate with all the other phenomena of the psyche, seems to us to give a durable, subjective value [ Subjective : characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind : phenomenal — compare objective 1b 1b b : relating to or being experience or knowledge as conditioned by personal mental characteristics or states ] to images which often have only a doubtful or ephemeral objectivity. By obliging us to retrace our steps systematically and make an effort toward clarity of awareness with respect to a poet's given image, the phenomenological method leads us to attempt communication with the creating consciousness of the poet." (Gaston, 1)

"In times of great discoveries, a poetic image can be the seed of the world, the seed of a universe imagined out of a poet's reverie." (Gaston, 1)

"The poetic image is in no way comparable, as with the mode of the common metaphor, to a valve which would open up to release pent-up instincts. The poetic image sheds light on a consciousness in such a way that it is pointless to look for subconscious antecedent [a preceding event, condition, or cause b plural : the significant events, conditions, and traits of one's earlier life] of the image." (Gaston, 3)

"As soon as a poetic image renews itself in any single one of its traits, it manifests a primitive simplicity." (Gaston, 4)

"Faced with images which the poets bring us, faced with images which we could never have imagined ourselves, this naivete of wonderment is completely natural. But in submitting passively to such wonder, one does not participate profoundly enough in the creating imagination. The phenomenology requires that we participate actively in the creating imagination. Since the goal of all phenomenology is to situate awareness in the present, in a moment of extreme tension, we are forced to conclude that, in so far as the characteristics of the imagination are concerned, there is no phenomenology of passivity." (Gaston, 4)

"...we often stated that one could scarcely develop a psychology of the creative imagination if he did not succeed in distinguishing clearly between imagination and memory. If there is any realm where distinction is expecially difficult, it is the realm of chilhood memories, the realm of beloved images harboured in memory since childhood. These memories which live by the image and in virtue of the image become, at certain times of our lives and particularly during the quiet age, the origin and matter of a complex reverie: the memory dreams, and reverie remembers." (Gaston, 20)

City must be "REFRAMED"

As a territorial marker, these objects acts as an edge between inhabitant and place, though access would be granted if the person chose to progress beyond the edge, the question becomes what is the psychological ramification of being at constant separation from the person's own place and home. To constantly be in the mode of observation, on the road, in the car, within the aluminum framework that bounds our visual, limiting what we are able to see before these visuals are impeded by the metal casing and seating of the car; framing our city, constantly, always, but never placing the city in our hands long enough that a personal relationship can root from the experience.... The car, road, and light post, are just the smaller elements within a larger scope of things that keeps us from understanding and caring for our city and yet they are very much needed. It would not be practical to say that they should simply be removed as these elements are the vein within the body of societal progress. Rather the better solution might exist within working with these means of observation... the city must be re-framed and the image bound within the frames must be able to engage inhabitants on a more sensorial level that is not just perceived.

Sense as a Trigger for Memory

susan:

i would embrace that [individualized design], if that is ultimately the result. I wonder if I was asking you to consider that as a possibility; some of you won't end up with a building or a built thing, but a method for making, in the end, that could be about a building type, a construction method, a building system, an urban system, a suburban system, or about the practice of architecture itself. i find the most challenging thing in thinking about what an architectural thesis truly is, is that it can't always be easily classified into a category, as Professor Green outlined last Wednesday.

to your other questions...

what i like about your thesis, thus far, is that you are investing (what appears to me) a very personal response to a definition of architecture through the use of your "memory-images", which we can have further discussions on regarding that as an historical instrument for knowing and making. I am not sure that context for you is a physical context, but may be something more abstract. i know that you have mentioned the pool/park that you inhabited as a child/young person, but is that the context, or something that just happened to be where those memories were created? Does memory, and the images they evoke, become a portable thing for you that is deposited, and re-deposited, over time and over a variety of landscapes, structures, forms, and build the framework for the new architecture that you present? As to film, is the structure of cinematography the method for depositing, as well as, extracting memory from this architecture (construction methodology), or a wayfinding strategy (navigating the architecture)?

i think you are closer to having a clear thesis statement; however,

to create a spatial condition that awakens THE senses in order to engage context (to make us care about where we live/ how we live). I do this by referencing my own memories and understanding of a place, to use a methodology that uses imagery (that is a reference to cinematography but is otherwise architecturally framing context) as a means of bringing emphasis and importance to the overall context.

i would argue that memories are not senses, but that the senses both create and help to recall memory (the senses are devices that serve memory). Is "context" place, or, genius loci? are you developing a new system that will imbue new meaning/value to an individuals, or society's, relationship with place? I think, ultimately, that you are referencing a crisis of place, and that what you are proposing is a system of making that seeks to redefine meaning for place. What you will need to be careful of, if this is the case, is what is place (a building, an urban or suburban construct, or a larger context that ties all of these physical forms with abstract concepts, such as cultural, societal, physiological, psychological and metaphysical factors).

Thesis Poster Design

Title:
Imagining an Image Architecture:
A Spatial Condition to Awaken the Senses and Establish One's Place Within Context

Refer to previous post for concept.

Light Post as the Edge Between Us and That Which We've Created

Light Post are man made creations that governs movement. They establish boundaries visually through their stagnant slender form and from what they decide to expose or disclose from us, they establish visual and psychological alignment in movement, they determine when someone will move and when someone will pause. During the day, they hover over us, ingrained within our everyday movement, during night, they expose our path of movement and hide from us, the dark corridors of our urban landscape. Our imagination creates the second layer of boundary, playing out images of what happens behind those dark corners that we don't see but assume to occur. In turn we choose to stay loyal to these determined paths of passages, never to stray away, as doing so will break conventions, it will make us remember our city, our landscapes, the spaces in between, and the buildings that inhabits them, and the responsibilities we've chosen to ignore during the day, and the city we choose to turn off at night.

"Imagining an Image Architecture"

- You might need to define what "context" means in the context of your paper; is this at a certain site? is it set within a particular building? is there a cultural context? without these referents, your abstract seems overly vague
- I am unsure of the word "Superimposing" in your title. From the previous paragraph in your abstract, it does not seem that superimposing is your aim. Perhaps 'integrating' is an alternative? Imagining, Creating, Desiging. Superimpose carries the connotation of forcing something or covering something else up. Which seems at odds with your stated goal of 'bringing emphasis and importance to the overall context.'
- this sounds like this will develop as a personal as well as academic exploration. I am intrigued.

-Stephen

REPLY:
I really like the word "Imagining" alot. Maybe "Imagining an Image Architecture." I feel this talks less about framing and preserving memory and context, as I am trying to stay away from talking about a site that needs to be framed as if it was an artifact, and more about remembering context in order to reengage the inhabitant within his setting. I also feel the word "Image" comes with alot of conotation (maybe especially put against architecture) of something that is captured and meant to be seen a certain way and "Imagining" seems to contrast that, perhaps bringing more to the idea that thoughts and memories conjured up by the experience are not exclusive to a set of predetermined rules but rather meant to be explored as personal and individualized experiences.

Art as Experience by: John Dewey

"Inner harmony is attained only when, by some means, terms are made with the environment. When it occurs on any other than an objective basis, it is illusory-in extreme cases to the point of insanity." (Dewey, 16)

"Experience is the result, the sign, and the reward of that interaction of organism and environment which, when it is carried to the full, is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication." (Dewey, 22)

"When a flash of lightning illumines a dark landscape, there is a momentary recognition of objects. But the recognition is not itself a mere point in time. It is the focal culmination of long, slow process of maturation. It is the manifestation of the continuity of an ordered temporal experience in a sudden discrete instant of climax. It is as meaningless in isolation..." (Dewey, 24)

"Experience occurs continuously, because the interaction of live creature and environing conditions is involved in the very process of living... Oftentimes, however, the experience had is ichoate. Things are experienced ut not in such a way that they are composed into an experience....
For life is no uniform uninterrupted march or flow. It is a thing of histories, each with its own plot, its own inception and movement toward its close, each having its own particular rhythmic movement; each with its own unrepeated quality pervading it throughout...
Experience in this vital sense is defined by those situations and episodes that we spontaneously refer to as being "real experiences."
Because of continuous merging, there are no holes, mechanical junctions, and dead centers when we have an experience. There are pauses, places of rest, but they punctuate and define the quality of movement." (Dewey, 36,37,38)

* "A generalized illustration may be held if we imagine a stone, which is rolling down a hill, to have an experience. The activity is surely sufficiently "practical." The stone starts from somewhere, and moves, as consistently as conditions permit, toward a place and state where it will be at rest- toward an end. Let us add, by imagination, to these external facts, the ideas that it looks forward with desire to the final outcome; that it is interested in the things it meets on its way, conditions that accelerate and retard its movement with respect to their bearing on the end; that it acts and feels tributes to them; and that the final coming to rest is related to all that went before as the culmination of a continuous movement. Then the stone would have an experience, and one with esthetic quality." (Dewey 41)