Architectural Building Fabrication + Technology

[anewmanifestation]

The construction of a problem - Jane Burry

Some of Burry’s writing flew over my head. I think I’ll have to brush up on my Kant to get a clearer sense of she refers to with the terms ‘synthetic’ v. ‘analytic’. Her musings on the role of syntax felt relatable, specifically the quote “The design workflow is shaped syntactically by the logical structure of the language and software.” When grappling with computer programming languages or CAD programs, it is evident that people tend to work in a way that aligns with paths of least resistance with the tool being used. The capabilities of the system, naturally guide the work. This connect to another striking quote, “it is possible to create in language, natural or logical relationships, which cannot be immediately brought into existence spatially or geometrically.” This reflects the difficulties of encountering a limit of the language within which one is working. This is especially apparent when attempting to translate an object from one language to another. An object created easily in real life may be frustratingly difficult to produce in CAD, for example, or vice versa.

On another note, the terms ‘language’, ‘syntax’, ‘logic’, ‘system’, and more tossed around a lot and I’m realizing I don’t have the clearest grasp on their distinctions.

[eduarana-blog]

My visit to Richard Buckminster Fuller’s Dome in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (protagonist of our reading for week 4) during this autumn.

[professormcewen-blog]

exercise artifacts on display for jury at final review

[ckyliu-blog]

EX 1, 2, 3

[reubenzeiset-blog]

We created a new form based on the original model with the straight line and cast it. These images show the form, its resolution as a mold, and the casting process.

[susanguo-deactivated20190314]

Reading Response: Sara Ahmed

In “Willing Parts,” Sara Ahmed states: “A division of labor becomes a difference in feet. Feet in standing can stand for will. When the will of some parts is generalized, those parts are freed: they can be free not to support the whole body when others provide this support, when other bodies become their feet. Freedom to will translates into freedom from function” (*1). Ahmed is using the human body as a metaphor for the organization of human society. Subordinates perform labor, which means that their superiors do not. Just like a human being cannot walk without feet, society could not function without its laborers.

Mario Carpo also discusses the “division of labor” but specifically in architecture. He points out that during the Renaissance, the architect began producing “allographic” work instead of “autographic” work, which contributed to “the growing intellectual and social estrangement between architects and builders” (*2). That is, the architect designed work that others executed. Architects are freed from labor by the construction workers who build their designs. Without them, their designs would never appear in physical form; without them, society could not function. In other words, they may be subordinate in the hierarchy of labor and the hierarchy of society, but they are no less human. Treat them like so.

To do away with power structures and differentiations of social status, however, would be foolish and unrealistic because, as Ahmed argues, the division of labor creates efficient processes (*3). The “division of labor” has allowed many great human accomplishments. No one can, for example, construct a building alone. But that is precisely the point: society is collective; every part, every person, every human being matters. As Ahmed argues: “Sympathy is a feeling with: if one part suffers, suffer do all; or at least suffer should all. A part should be willing to care for other parts, and in turn will receive what we might think of as a parting care” (*4).

(*1) Sara Ahmed, “Chapter 3: Willing Parts,” in Willful Subjects, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 112.

(*2) Mario Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Writing Architecture Series, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 15-16.

(*3) Sara Ahmed, “Chapter 3: Willing Parts,” in Willful Subjects, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 108.

(*4) Sara Ahmed, “Chapter 3: Willing Parts,” in Willful Subjects, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 104.

[ckyliu-blog]

EX 7

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CEMENT CASTING

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CEMENT FILL AND FOAM REMOVAL 

[aviscusi]

[aviscusi]

[ckyliu-blog]

Will and Queerness in Part to Whole Relationships

This week’s reading by Sara Ahmed titled The General Will is admittedly dense but truly fascinating. Ahmed takes us through a philosophical journey unpacking the relationship between the general will and the particular will as part to whole relationships (i.e. hand/arm to body, child to family). Ahmed begins by elucidating the contradictions of the argument surrounding free will, such that individuals are forced to obey the general will in order to exercise freedom, with “force” and “freedom” as the opposing conditions. Throughout the chapter Ahmed highlights the mutual dependence between part to part as well as the more hierarchical, servile, conditional nature of the relationship between part to whole. The nuance of the disproportionate power dynamic (that I interpreted from this reading) of the function and duty of the part to please/serve the whole at the risk of its own survival is then applied to the value system capitalism sets up in our “civil society”. When various entities both material and immaterial are assigned value based on the State Regulated Free Market™️ (one that is a (historically) violent, racist, ableist, homophobic and transphobic expression of supremacy), issues arise. Deviants from traditional values begin to obstruct expectations and, perhaps in the eyes of some, negatively affect production/productivity. The most salient example that Ahmed presents to us is the role children play in the nuclear family. The family, specifically the membership and continuity of the family, is the go-to method of reproducing, accruing, preservation of capital. Therefore, the instability that the queer child creates in the function of the family, that is, inheritance and social and “biological” reproduction, is punishable by the cis-het capitalist society. Those viewed as unproductive vagabonds who make themselves un-exploitable are problematic and dangerous to the status quo. This makes the queer experience both vulnerable within the normative society in which it was born, and, more optimistically (yet laboriously), the site for denaturalizing, disrupting, and emphasizing oppressive systems of conformity and exploitative relationships between part and whole and particular will and general will. Ahmed’s arguments and methodologies are of course much more complex and rigorously laid out than I have attempted at explaining here. What’s both inspiring and interesting in this reading is its relationship to architecture. This entire semester we have been studying and putting into practice part to whole relationships. Whether it is the geometries that create the Sol Lewitt designs, the tabs that bring together unrolled surfaces, the wood block’s relationship to its original state of being (tree), the aggregate to the mass, or the ABB machine to us, architects and the discipline of architecture are constantly asked to understand the relationship between part and whole throughout the design process from the inception of an idea to the final presentation/construction. I really want to explore the extents or non extents of queerness in architecture. How can we reimagine the processes and the relationships we form with our materials and machines and technologies to be anti-normative and as intentional challenges to the cis-het bourgeois architecture we we know and interact with? How can queer processes translate into architectural spaces? Can architectural spaces be anti-normative? Can architectural spaces be queer? What are the limitations of “queer architecture” and can they even be called revolutionary or anti-normative within the normative society?

[arcbuildingsystems-blog]

Stan Allen, Introduction

[anewmanifestation]

foam cutting process

[reubenzeiset-blog]

Form two of three

[anewmanifestation]

Response - Ahmed’s Willful Subjects

Presented is a list of various observations on the reading:

The words “particular” and “participate” derives from “part”. 

A part without a whole is in a state of death. A body deconstructed in parts is dead.

Specialization of parts is indicative of advancement.

The notion of a social body can invoke ideas of equality or hierarchy.

Capital, viewed as blood, is never questioned, it is always considered for the good of the whole body.

Workers are often seen and treated as limbs, usually hands or feet (handmaid, footman).

Hands are often dis-membered, but they can be re-membered, with sympathy.

Tools extend the body, but can also reduce the body into a tool. When the body is just a tool, the person may lose ownership over it.

When a person is reduced to a limb or tool, spaces are constructed to extract labor from him or her.

To be willful, that is to have too much will, is to break connections with the general will of the body.

[thenosharchitect]

Inspiration for the form of our foam cut model