Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture. Autumn 2013. Graduate Second Year Studio.
2OBJECTS 2HOUSES. Bryan, TX.
Critics: Gabriel Esquivel and Stephen Caffey
Teaching assistant: Zach Hoffmann.
Student: Xi Wu.
This project has 2 components a
house for a classic musician and his son, an “indie” rock musician. Both houses
will share an exterior area. The site is in Bryan, TX in an area confronted by
suburbia and an old industrial area where a series of old industrial objects as
ruins are present.
This studio confronted the Modern
Object; it will compare the indexical object in parallel to an ontological
object. This is to say a methodological/discursive relationship between the
autonomous indexical object and the ontological object.
As we have moved away from
linguistics, painting and other disciplines to derive theoretical discourses,
these other related disciplines reached a limit in a quest for autonomy and
self-sufficiency due to the logic and rhetoric employed to achieve their goals,
architecture went through the same deconstruction occurred in other fields,
eventually resulted in theories called “post-structuralist”, “post-critical”
and “post-indexical.” We found ourselves in an interesting moment of lateness
ending the periods of transgressions.
The first object responds precisely to the previous statement, it explores the classic type of architectural object that I have been working with for a long time.
The first object responds precisely to the previous statement, it explores the classic type of architectural object that I have been working with for a long time.
The second Object is a
paradigm shift in spatial perception due to the intense use of computational
techniques in architecture and the capacity to process and manipulate massive
amounts of data, whereby rhythm is now perceived as playing an active role in
the formation of space and the tectonic articulation, claiming the foreground figural
field and not just merely embedded or indexed in the structure.
We are in a moment where
architecture is redefining its position, moving from a subject-centered and
systematic discourse to an object-oriented situation. Objects need not be
natural, simple, or indestructible. Instead, objects will be defined only by their
autonomous reality. They must be autonomous in two separate directions:
emerging as something over and above their pieces, while also partly
withholding themselves from relations with other entities (1). Object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a
metaphysical movement that rejects the privileging of human existence over that
of nonhuman objects (2). Specifically, object-oriented ontology
opposes the anthropocentrism of Immanuel Kant's Copernican Revolution, whereby
objects are said to conform to the mind of the subject and, in turn, become
products of human cognition (3).
Object-oriented ontology opens up
a unique possibility for rethinking the peculiar problems associated with the
problem of nature. A return to the object would have to be understood as a
turning away from a mythological or sentimental understanding of nature toward
the particularities and the essential strangeness of the objects themselves. In
this particular project, the use of a seashell, an object of nature, was a
deliberate selection. By submitting this “natural object” through a series of
drawing translations, a new object related to its autonomous drawing process
rather than nature was created. This object doesn’t operate in normative
representation.
Assume for a moment that the
architectural object is unified as an object, and remember that an architect is
also an object in this ontology, not an enlightened mind outside the world of
objects giving form to formless matter (4). A return to the architectural
object as a disciplinary priority cannot be a nostalgic return to pre-modern
academic preoccupations with character, propriety, and the idealities of a
compositional balance. Nor is this return to the object a simple return to
figuration and detached massing. “Object” here should not be understood in a
literal sense.
Successful object making cannot
be completely encapsulated by a methodology that might repeat the success.
There are diverse methodologies to investigate. This object operates outside of
formal indexical operations. As a non-theoretical interaction between the maker
as an object and the various objects of the making process, “craft” is the
ambiguous word that has, in the past, identified the unique expertise of the
maker in the relationship to the material. This where the relationship between
Evans’ position in regards to drawing in terms of inventing complex drawings is
what we have referred to as the architect’s craft and the object-oriented
ontology that allows for the theoretical revisions of the future of an
architectural object.
The studio produced to objects
from different point of view, using different techniques, analog and digital.
1.
Ruy, David. (2012). Returning to Strange Objects. Tarp Architecture Manual (Spring): p. 38 (2012)
2.
Harman, Graham (2002). Tool-Being: Heidegger and the
Metaphysics of Objects. Peru, Illinois: Open Court. p. 2. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/08126094449|08126094449
[[Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs]]]].
3.
Bryant, Levi. "Onticology–A Manifesto for Object-Oriented
Ontology, Part 1." Larval Subjects. Retrieved 9
September 2011.
4.
Ruy, David. (2012). Returning to Strange Objects. Tarp Architecture Manual (Spring): p.42 (2012)
