The Sensual and The Insensate. The Raw and The Synthetic

Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture. T4T LAB Spring 2014.
"The Sensual and The Insensate"
Invited Professor: Bruno Juricic.

With Gabriel Esquivel.
Team: Stephen Renard, Matt West, David Creamer and Hillary Hage.

Video Link. 

https://vimeo.com/92640873 


The Sensual & The Insensate          

The object within an object defines our project, proximity forcing two dichotomous forms to interact. This interaction illustrates a relationship between the sensual and the insensate, a futile relationship in which the objects will never coalesce nor achieve what they are wont to do. Our project discusses the conflicting objects and the consequences thereof, a conflict responsible for the formal relationships between the objects, as well as between the objects and the ground.

The exterior is dumb to external stimuli, insensate (bringing to mind Werner Herzog’s “Every man for himself and God against all” in which Kaspar Hauser cannot communicate his internal disfigurement, so the external object cannot communicate the presence of the interior); this object is synthetic; following no set pattern, constraint or delivery. Its form and material give a fluid appearance and only the scarring in pockets of phenomenal depth confirms its solidity.
In "the Raw and the Cooked" Levi Staruss writes: “We know [the] raw only because we know what [the] cooked is.”  This produces the idea of the implicitly raw interior, which manifests itself as the boudoir. This object pushes hollow tendrils through the insensate exterior, hoping to be seen, but still not accessed, implying the object’s possession of agency as well as a sensual nature. The interior is articulated to the point of interior design. As it is created by a cluster of cubes it questions scale and accessibility similar to Eisenman’s Cannaregio. It is the sensual, sentient object; it pushes through and against the exterior hoping not only to be seen, but to make the exterior feel it. This strife is responsible for the hollow spillage of the boudoir to the outside, the subterranean pockets (which are the only means of access to the boudoir), and possibly the form of the exterior itself (the forms of the exterior being caused by actions of the interior would also affirm its insensateness)

The poche portrays the implied fluidity of the insensate object. The clarity shows the design within, and calls into question the solidity. The viscous gel like texture gives the idea of a liquid, yet the solid aspects of the gel verify the solidity of the insensate. The sensual object has a porous solid materiality, alluding to that objects agency, as its thicker, more solid nature affirms that its form is not caused by other objects but by conscious movements on its part.  

These two objects not only resist each other, but also resist the ground, a sentient agent, as the object hovers away from it and has no formal relationship with it, other than proximity. The ground reaches with the ramp to touch it, to view and even access the interior, it hearkens back to Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam as the sentient reaching towards and implanting sentience within the insensate.