Winter weather is around the corner and the addition no further along than this time last year. 2021 has seen inflated material costs, due to production slow downs and delays by transportation backlogs, as well as labor shortages from overloaded volumes of work – with no end in sight. And yet, the open, unfinished space made the perfect place for working outdoors and holiday entertaining. …maybe, we may never close it in.
Starship SN8: with the grace of a ballerina upright, suspended momentarily, then free falling forward into a swan dive, a stainless steel skin, oil-canning, fluttering, sailing the atmospheric winds as a clipper ship on the waters to new worlds, returning to the poetics of the natural world by the simplest, most available means.
Looking Glasses: inverted bay window, projecting inside instead of out, a place for nature to be brought into daily life, our interiors the landscape, no longer immersed within the wilderness, now patchwork of small pockets, test tubes containing samples for study.
Barkskins: natural protective cladding, against the rains, yet organic, unable to hold up to the weathering of time, when no longer needed, maintained, simply returns back to the earth, naturally, inhabited structures made of these soft, pervious materials facilitate a grounding, connection, continual exchange with the environment to last.
Organics: sensitivity to an analog world operating at microscopic scale, in opposition to subconscious minds evolving toward digital technology.
Thresholds torn, loosening, unraveling, relaxing to afford permeability, impermanence, passivity to overcome obsessiveness for crispness and sterility found in uninhabitable showpieces and cabinets of curiosities, the easing, numbness, distancing from natural wilderness that has been domesticated, harvested, depleted.
Envelope that shelters mind and body more than wind and water, space to breathe.
adjustable gauge: without standardized units of measure, rather a pair of lines bound by a point, to pivot, adjust to any condition, transferring directly by a fitting, tactilely, in the doing, intuitively.
nadir: windchime, weight in space, a point located on a line vertical to the force of gravity, a tensile in dialog between the addition roof rafters and the mass of the earth, continually bound, estereostatic model calculating, reacting empirically to the tidal movements of our planet, in search of balance equilibrium, reminding that we are biological creatures, interacting with our surroundings physically, participating in a world that is tangible, necessitating interface.
vessels: tensile totems, fabric of life that defines individuality, palimpsests of the weaving that network things together, hammocks in suspension between, receptors of cross currents, spider web signaling synchronization.
sukkah: wilderness shelter
s’chach: plant-based roof structure made of pine branches, providing more shade than sun, however with sufficient gaps that the stars can be seen at night.
Chag HaAsif: festival of ingathering, built for the harvesting, with walls to withstand terrestrial winds, canvas tethered down to the earth as a sail with a fluttering, to remind of the fragility and transience of life, a tensile, string line pulled into the woods, leading the way back to the natural world.
Addition to Villa Vuoto & Tensiles to Gaudí (Plant-Based Architecture Lecture 2020.09.22)
Plume: an immersive, interactive dome of synchronized light and sound gestures, by Ian Brill. The installation using motion, sound and color to present an ephemeral and ethereal ecosystem, is a model for a possible artistic collaboration and integration into the ceiling framework and interior finish material for the addition.
interrupted window: inspired by Basquiat’s painting technique, “I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”, likewise, the vertical structural supports interrupting the circular windows, draws the eye to the obscured view of the natural outdoors, often missed or forgotten by the visual sensory conditioning to traditional walls of unobscured glass.
Untitled (1984) Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat
The Architecture of Antoni Gaudí – Fluid Plasticity (CMU Lecture 2020.08.03)
The Architecture of Antoni Gaudí – Illuminated Space (CMU Lecture 2020.07.27)
Operables: hybrid window and door combine, central pivot hardware balancing weight reducing feel of heavy barrier separating interior space from natural outdoors, while interrupting passage through center and small scale openings requiring a lowered head in reverence, both to raise awareness of a threshold passed.
The Architecture of Antoni Gaudí – Equilibrated Structure (CMU Lecture 2020.07.20)
The Architecture of Antoni Gaudí – Natural Form (CMU Lecture 2020.07.13)
The Architecture of Antoni Gaudí – Surface Ornament (CMU Lecture 2020.07.06)
Totems Model (quarter inch scale), sprouting through a crack in a recessed corner toward the sunlight.
The Architecture of Antoni Gaudí – Parabolic Arc (CMU Lecture 2020.06.29)
Revised Framing Model (quarter inch scale), individually loaded simple span rafters, tucked and transferring to original house structure.
Structural model (one inch scale), empirical graphic static calculations of compounded loads by stacked rafters.
Architecture is nowhere to be found in the Sunday paper coupons.
A home created for the particular enlightened individual has been blunted by the fool leaning against balcony rails, without common sense for the inherent danger elevated off the ground.
Gaudí’s Influence on Contemporary Architecture – Estereostàtic (University of Pittsburgh Lecture 2020.06.04)
Framing model (quarter inch scale), finger joint and inclined prop triangular structural frame supporting compounded sloped rafters.
String drawing, spatial flow.
Elevation and Plan drawing of woven wood lath wall (quarter inch scale), undulating in and out of inclined structural props.
String model (full scale, in situ), sisal twine pulled by hand, measured to the eye.
Study model (sixteenth inch scale).
Gesture sketch for the addition, weaving sloped linear rafters from single radiating compounded point, creating undulating roofline and hyperbolic paraboloid surface.
