Monday, January 22, 2018

Totemic 1












Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture Fall 2017.
Totemism. a Gallery for Louise Nevelson, Houston, TX.
Student: Daniel Enyon 
The project, from the initial diagram, started its development as an understanding of Volume, Poche, and form, articulated as a canopy over a public space booleaned into the plinth. However, through the translation of the digital, my project shifted to the understanding of the figure. This figure as an object focuses on the idea not of the vertical totem, but the horizontal collection of objects with a small degree of stacking. This totemic articulation allows for the object to discuss a separation of surface, object and volume, leading to the presentation of the argument of the tea set.
            The idea of the Tea set begins with the scenario where a collection of objects has multiple ontologies. But, simultaneously, the tea set argues a unified object through articulation of the surfaces. The tea set is, in its essence, the middle ground between the ideas of the still life collection and the unified surface object, and the complex nature of these ideas generates enormous ontological tension.
            As my object argues figure, the separation that occurred in its surface from its volumes led to the blending of specific moments of the surface. Because of the specificity of these moments, my objects as the idea of the tea set, continuing to delve into these contingencies through volume, pattern, surface, color, and shadow,referencing the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud. -----Thiebaud's from my perspective, speculates on the realities of what is the natural and it asks the question of how surface and color relate to materiality, are these real cakes, real plates? His also work evokes a sensation: an affect embedded behind the initial understanding of the work. Through the questioning of the natural, using the work of Thiebaud the issue of aesthetics comes into play, his work also presents itself with that kind of a specific aesthetic, and proceeds to challenge the aesthetic regime of the modern, I decided for my project to use this idea to question the modern aesthetic regime through the same methods that Thiebaud does.
            In terms of my project's aesthetic regime, it stems from a misreading of art history, from Thiebaud, into conditions that are not about the history of art, pop art, etc. But specifically misreading the labor of the painting, the color, the shadow, the pattern, and the texture from Theibaud. The contention of architecture according to these principles engages an aesthetic regime that could possibly be outside of our present concept of reality: the reality which is obsessed with the aesthetic regime of the modern.

            The new aesthetic regime is a political act against modernism, and operates as such through the direct questioning of what a new aesthetic regime should be, and the criteria for what is considered beautiful, natural, and real. My project engages viewers to resist the status quo of the aesthetic regime, and through the embedded nature of aesthetics into an architectural objects, this allows my project to go through a process of disengagement an resistance avoiding modern strategies like contextual blending to undermine it. 

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Totemic 2







Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture Fall 2017.
Totemism. a Gallery fo Louise Nevelson, Houston, TX.
Student: Will Van Dusen


Totemic 3








Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture Fall 2017.
Totemism. a Gallery fo Louise Nevelson, Houston, TX.
Student: Finn Rattana
I am using the notion of totemic as an ontological exploration and as a strategy of stacking 3 different ontologies to become one,
In my specific case, I began my project by borrowing some ideas of my original indexical model as some kind of interpretation that brought certain parts back, however presented them in a different sense.
The project is about the argument FIGURE and poche as well as the idea of representation using  2-dimensional flatness of the architectural image giving a graphic sense and 3-dimensional objects.
 I started by taking the idea of the figural objects from the indexical model of the Kronish House by Richard Neutra. After that, I used a sculpture, Night Flight by Louise Nevelson misreading it as a manual to conform the section.
By exploring with scaling, extrusion, and booleaning methods, the objects start to have a relationship that connected the different objects by a series of local contingencies beginning to read as one object, however the real connection comes from something else. From there, I introduced figure in different ways such as:
 figure as poche,
figure as space,
figure as small and large objects,
figure as ground
However, the project is not just about the figures, but also dealing with the idea of flatness to volume or mass or the relationship of 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional.
The front façade argues the idea of flatness which is 2-dimensional, but from the back, it is about  a 3- dimensional object that brings a flat plane and volume together. The figures used in the project start to tie everything together. Moreover, the object is also but the use of linework, this becomes a critical moment where all of these lines begin to interact throughout the project.  This idea was taken from my indexical model .
As the linework comes across and goes though the ground and starts to build up into the project in different ways, it starts interacting and making connections between the ground and the objects. Then, it becomes its own profile, then as window mullion, as elevation or even become ornamentation.

The ground and the object are basically connected by the idea of the figure, that happens is mass and volume but also in plan and section. in other words figure and line work brings the object together, the project is a weirdly hybridized object that falls into a speculative type, it addresses the post-digital criteria of a combination of Lo-Fi or Hi-Fi operations. Like most of the projects in the class my object becomes an architecture of defiance challenging norms of aesthetics by using the release of the figure.

Totemic 4










Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture Fall 2017.
Totemism. a Gallery fo Louise Nevelson, Houston, TX.
Student: Kate Gesing


Totemic 5





Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture Fall 2017.
Totemism. a Gallery fo Louise Nevelson, Houston, TX.
Student: Victoria Rosado

Totemic 6










Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture Fall 2017.
Totemism. a Gallery fo Louise Nevelson, Houston, TX.
Student: Stephanie Maddamma

Totemic 7









Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture Fall 2017.
Totemism. a Gallery fo Louise Nevelson, Houston, TX.
Student: Chris Loofs