Charlene Kai Liu 311 @ckyliu-blog - Tumblr Blog

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glossinger-blog

Final review!!

Final Pin Up

EX 1, 2, 3

EX 4

EX 6

EX 7

CEMENT FILL AND FOAM REMOVAL

CEMENT CASTING

#CEMENT #CAST

Section Architecture (Iwamoto)

In Lisa Iwamoto’s article on sectioning, they discuss the variations of sections, the functions of sections, and how the act of drawing sections has changed with the advent of technology and three dimensional rendering. Whereas more traditional means of finding and creating a section usually start with an already built physical model, now, more often than not three dimensional models are drawn on the computer first, and getting sections from those drawings is only a matter of a couple clicks and commands. Iwamoto also discusses the usefulness of the section as a construction technique—using concepts of “profile” and “edge” to indicate useful elements to consider within a section. Throughout the article, Iwamoto also makes references to materials and machinery. This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the chapter. What do sections have to do with the materials and machines use to craft the parts of the whole? Using real examples such as Iwamoto’s very own Digital Weave, we learn that “in negotiating constructive exigencies the project illustrates the adoption of now well-established steps for translating sectional cuts into a material system. Because the sectional cuts are not parallel to one another, the ribs are first rotated, moved onto a consistent plane, and consecutively labeled.” (Iwamoto 16). After looking at the pictures of the Digital Wave, I see now how the section plays a key role in the material and construction of the architecture. That is, the section motivates the construction of the architecture and the architecture its own section of itself, made possible by the actual material used to construct it and how that material was mechanically utilized.

#section #digital weave #iwamoto

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?

#Sara Ahmed #Willful subjects

EX 7 FOAM CUTS

EX 7 Inspiration, Testing, Cut

#foam cutting #frequency

Indexing

In Stan Allen’s chapter on plotting traces, he discusses the functions and limitations of the index in architecture. Indexes, as initially explained by Allen in his analysis of the footprints, are “physical artifacts…some concrete mark always left behind”. Indexes in the context of architecture is thus linked to the narrative process, as narrative processes function to elucidate operations of design and procedure. The issue arises, however, when process and procedure incur over extended (and often incalculable) periods of time and absorb various and indefinite inspirations, affiliations, precedents, and impacts from internal and external interactions (i.e. humans, weather). Part of Allen’s critique on architect’s fascination/usage of indexing to represent the animated nature of the trace within the design process is the absence of indexing the complexities of material, bodies, and other real “physical artifacts” affecting the architecture.

Allen’s proposal to this issue was rather interesting. Rather than moving in a retrospective, backwards, and geometrically calculable yet abstract direction that indexing usually functions, perhaps it is important to get “closer” to the building. Re-engaging with the building, understanding the complexities of human movement, material decay, etc., can ground the architect’s “promiscuous presence” to the building and the other understandings of a building’s “life” and animatedness.

#Stan Allen #Indexing