Brightening up the place

This is the visual solution for our community building group that I am proposing in class tomorrow. This is an interesting and extreme example of what we propose for Grad ComD studios. Two artists worked with local youth to transform a notorious slum in Brazil into a fun rainbow candy-cane composition. The image represents a greater symbol of the idea that we have to transform a space through color and activity, also to enliven a drab space (especially the bathrooms). In our studio we have a different situation because we’re not trying to eradicate poverty or improve the slums, but what we do have is a chance to enrich our surroundings and experience at school. Our project could be a mural that covers the walls inside the studio or a simple collage as Brenda suggested that is begins at one end and students add to it when they have something to contribute. This project could break in the new space, and allow students to personalize it while creating an interactive community project. Also prospective students can visit and get a distinct feel for a personality and identity of the program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bathroom really could see the most benefit from a program like this.

Image of the city on googlebooks

I found the Kevin Lynch book Image of the City on Google (well parts of it at least). He suggests that the mental image we have of our home towns depends on if the place offers a richly-detailed and well-defined experience. My latest idea for a thesis project is based on pattern recognition in our surroundings. I’d like to create a symbol archive for recognizable forms, patterns and interactions in a city (based on Lynch’s work). A water tower could be labelled “hope” and other patterns could represent other feelings and ideas. We remember patterns in the abstract and can identify different places based on this mental map, or internal photograph we take of a place. The mental map idea is fascinating to me.

Similar to Lynch, my project is inspired by the need for an antidote to the separateness and disjointedness of the city. By exploring the line relationships, patterns, textures, sounds and shape interactions of one section of the street we can begin to create order and find meaning in our surroundings. Humans instinctively seek patterns in our environment, for this is a way of establishing order in the midst of chaos. I am imposing my own order through the lens of the camera but also through line drawings and analyzing shape abstractions/interactions.

I have a basic understanding of the New Urbanism and it’s roots in the writings of Jane Jacobs. Modernism was such an idealistic approach, to reduce all complex phenomena to a few general abstractions. In planning however it rejected the real needs of human beings living in a community and created isolated, unnatural urban spaces. In architecture, modernism created clean, simple (some might argue boring) structures with the intention of transparency and being true to the materials.

A few interesting urban planning blogs I came across:
http://www.bricoleurbanism.org/
http://emergenturbanism.com/
http://abramv.com/blog/

I’m interested in looking at modern architecture’s effect on our sense of place. The tradition of architectural ornament is sadly missing today, and these details show the human touch and contribute to a rich and meaningful experience of the street.

Possible studies: overall shapes (b/w and color), color study, texture study, middle shapes (windows, doors, lampposts), detail shapes (bricks, street art) ***shape abstraction at a basic level may tell a story similar to the overall shapes, audio (see below), system of points of reference (symbol archive of abstractions), also abstract paintings to visualize a memory map or meaning of place.

The layers of history and the interaction of architectural structure and human interference is really interesting and related to my original interest in conservation of a neighborhood. The Lower East side is the point that immigrants have historically passed through and is currently in the process of severe gentrification. This image is the door of a 1903 synagogue on Rivington street. The curving graffiti is such an interesting addition layered on top of the odd shapes of the door.

Another example of the juxtaposition of old and new. The door seems like it has seen so much history and has such an interesting story itself, but placed next to the new (terrible) signage of Kuta it’s telling an entirely new tale of what happens when the layers of history are collapsed on top of one another.

Related to my previous rants, corporations have the opportunity to integrate into this pattern to fit the buildings needs and maintain the atmosphere of the neighborhood, but it’s also interesting to look at the lengths that businesses go to “create” authenticity. I’ve mentioned stores that fully integrate into the architecture and community that surrounds them, but retail stores like Earnest Sewn began less than 10 years ago and have adopted this antique look and feel with painted signage on the windows. They are catering to a customer who appreciates this antique feel and catering to a trend, and it’s interesting to learn why some people are more comfortable shopping in that kind of environment. It’s not authentic but does faux authenticity accomplish the same objective?

I need to look at the work of Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas, the MOMA architecture exhibition and also check out the Norman Foster gallery on the Bowery.

Also I’m looking at urban form now in Visual Language class, and it will probably tie in nicely with my thesis. I’ve started looking into urban planning history for this project and am mainly interested in the layout of different cities based on different patterns (grid, radial, chaos, geometric).

I’ve decided that for my final project in tech studio I’m focusing on the audio aspect of the street. I can use the wavelength of an audio clip from the ambient experience of the street, then map that with visual information or doing a light or color analysis with audio. There are sound processing freewares that can do this. I’m interested in the alternate ways of experiencing an environment.

My next project for thesis, after doing the studies listed above will be setting up a camera on a tripod to record the time-lapse experience of the street. It will be a mini investigation of time, space and community by showing different communities at different times of the day, and also how shadows transform the experience of the street. I can choose a segment of time, maybe one hour or 24 hours. Then splice the time-lapse photos into different compositions, or cut different objects out of the photo and examine how that changes the experience.

The bottom line is that my thesis is about telling a better story about a place.

Thesis statement as of now

For thousands of years, artists and designers have captured the essence of a place through their work. In my thesis work I intend to explore how art and design can be used to help people have a unique experience of a place, and thus be moved to preserve it’s authenticity. The unique sensory experience of Grand Central Station moved people to halt it’s demolition in the 70’s. Edward Hopper’s paintings of Greenwich village have inspired people to preserve the area’s authentic storefronts. How can a sensory experience be enhanced through design, and how can design capture the essence of a neighborhood?

My current focus is on the Rivington street neighborhood of the Lower East side, and projects will range from documentation, community interaction, and visual experimentation through drawing, collage and painting. Also of interest is the memory map, or abstract experience of a path through an area.

Kevin Lynch, ideas and documentation map

One more book to read: Kevin Lynch The Image of the City, 1961

I spent the afternoon on Friday reading Adrian Forty’s Words and Buildings. In the book there is a diagram from Kevin Lynch called “Form Qualities of the City” in which he simplifies our visual world to nine different illustrations. To Lynch and other urbanists concerned with the lack of intelligibility of our cities, form was the property that would overcome the alienation of modern cities. Not sure if I understand exactly how, but Forty writes “Interest in ‘form’ as the means of resisting the effects of mass culture and of urbanization have been recurrent throughout the twentieth century”. I think I’m onto something here because this is exactly what I’m interested in studying, but I need to read his book to understand completely.

I am halfway through reading The Experience of Place by Tony Hiss. It’s helped to open my eyes to all of the senses that create a feeling of atmosphere. For example smells, sounds, climate, angles of buildings (where patterns emerge), how sunlight creates space (relates to height of buildings) are all factors that contribute to our experience of place. Also something I would like to explore is to show how a space could be altered with significant changes – this could be the project where I remove all remnants of branding or signage from storefronts and examine how that changes the experience.

Naturally tied in with this experience is the awareness of previous uses and flows, and historical changes. This education could naturally create interest in the preservation of authenticity of a place. For example, the sensory experience of Grand Central station contributed to it’s preservation when the city wanted to tear it down in the 70’s. Also, the loss of Penn station before that was the driving force behind the creation of the Historical landmark commission in New York City.

My biggest challenge in all of this is to sift through the massive amount of information I’m encountering. I’m reading so much in my Seminar class that I haven’t been able to read as much as I would like for thesis. I think Kevin Lynch is exactly the jumping off point I needed, because my point of view is coming from two different areas and it seems like he marries those points of view. They are: 1. the rejection of speed and consumerism of our culture and preservation of authenticity of place. or at least awareness of historical and cultural context in development and signage. 2. Uncovering hidden forms, patterns and relationships in our surroundings and how these discoveries contribute to the atmosphere of a place.

We read a lot of Herbert Muschamp’s architecture criticism for Seminar this week, and I was interested in his differentiation between context and adjacency when discussing The New Museum. He writes that the New Museum’s roots are deep in Soho and thus the structure represents large raw loft spaces, but it’s location is firmly on the border of Soho and the Lower East side. There is no awareness of it’s place in a rich and layered historical neighborhood (the neighborhood I learned about from Charlie Cohen) apparent in the building’s white-walled interior or exterior of galvanized zinc. It is located directly next to the Bowery Mission and Salvation army, which has been housing, feeding and clothing the homeless and destitute since the late 1800’s. I wonder what the interaction is between these two institutions, the employees and visitors. I also wonder what Muschamp believed are the differences between context and adjacency?

On Wednesday night last week I walked from one end of Rivington street to the other with a tape recorder to capture the feeling of atmosphere at different junctures. I found it really interesting that there were three distinct atmospheres on this one street, and I am exploring the reasons why. This is the sketch of the documentation map I created. I wanted to capture all of the interactions, places and details that create the atmosphere of a neighborhood.

Survey for MFA students

We need to distribute a survey to everyone in the MFA to see what their needs are. We could have questions like:

1. what were your expectations of the MFA communications design program and have they been met? Why/why not?

2. Do you feel that there is still confusion among MFA students as to the nature of our program?

3. In your opinion what is the nature of the MS communications design program at Pratt?

4. are you interested in creating a unified community between the MFA and MS students?

5. Do you feel there is enough community among the MFA students?

6. would you be interested in events designed to take a break from our work, and hang out together outside of school?

Framing the problem

We are running into some obstacles while framing the problem. We originally wanted to alleviate the confusion between the two different programs. The MFA is a brand-new program and developing it’s identity, while the MS has been in the process of mutating into something completely new as well. Neither program has a strong identity, and the problem we are facing is how to create a unified spirit between the two when there really isn’t a strong community within each department?

My first thought is to create a happy hour for MFA students. Interacting outside of the classroom is crucial and a release from a lot of the pressures we feel about our work. Everyone needs a break sometimes! But if I create an event for a class doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Shoot.

We can create a map of everyone’s commute to school to see where everyone is coming from and that will be a fun way to interact. We can set up a map of New York with all it’s boroughs and provide strings and tacks. Or we could do an emotion map and give everyone their own button or sign with their picture to put on the emotion they feel that day. Does that just give everyone more work than they want or need? Probably, but if it’s a fun and welcome diversion then maybe it’s worthwhile.

If we have something on the wall with our photos and tidbits about ourselves maybe that will be something fun for other students to look at.

Looking Up and Other Inspiration

So I found this project, Sketches from Street Level, on Flickr after I had just finished an almost identical one that I called looking up. This photographer and I definitely have the same interests! See below:

I’m thinking that I can use this project as a jumping off point to transition to looking out at the streetscape (angles and patterns associated with looking down a street or up an avenue), then looking in, which wouldn’t be looking inside but instead looking at very simple and otherwise overlooked building details.

And then holy @#$% I found this. A link to part of Guy Debord and Asger Jorn’s Memoires from 1952. The delicate placement of type with dripping ink patterns is beautiful and reminiscent of the journey along a path. I can’t understand the French but I imagine them to be describing a daydream of the experience of the streets of Paris in the 1950’s.

I also discovered Place Magazine recently, a now closed publication from the 80’s and 90’s on urban spaces and planning. This is an exerpt from the editor’s letter Summer 1990 issue: “Places, like lives, evolve; sometimes uncertainly, sometimes abruptly, sometimes to good ends, sometimes for naught. Places though, carry our lives within them. They give structure to where we spend our time, what and whom we encounter, how much sky we see, how much green surrounds us, and how tightly or freely we conceive the community. Places form an armature for the imagination.”

Along this same line of thinking, I would like to explore the geography of a place to uncover these qualities. I spoke with Leigh Okies today and she gave magnificent advice on this direction. She created a project during her grad school experience at Art Center that was based on the Situationist movement (which I have studied at length for my topic!). They were really interested in the idea of derive, and just going out and experiencing the world. Their project began as a series of observations, not idea based at all but more of a game to formulate the project around these observations. They drew the word ‘gospel’ on a map of LA and drove around to different points on the map, observing and doing experiments. Their project culminated in visual artifacts that represent this series of experiments and observations. It is so inspiring to hear that her project produced such concrete benefits for the designers involved, and started out so amorphous.

This project speaks to me because I am struggling with the theoretical nature of many of our classes, finding that the thinking in words is taking away from my visual experimentation. I think a lot of reading and theoretical assignments have taken up time when I could be making, creating interesting projects for my thesis. I’ve posted many of my drawings on this blog in previous posts but I will post a new series here. Also a couple sketches for ideas I have towards making abstract maps, or memory maps. I just put together an “exhibition” of 20 artworks around nyc around this theme and it’s inspired me to create some of my own.

Mmm… Skyscaper I Love You just arrived as well, and it’s giving me even more visual direction. One of the earliest projects of Tomato (Karl Hyde and John Warwicker) created a book that feels like a film, all in homage to the feeling of walking around New York City. The compositions are made up of simple elements and typography but the texture that is created with out using any actual textures or colors besides black and white is striking. This inspires me to incorporate my drawings into a very simple but impactful graphic landscape.

I visited the Whitney on Sunday, and was blown away by the Edward Hopper painting, Early Sunday Morning. He had this way of creating a feeling that was entirely his own creation but it still represents the place in a powerful way. So much so that people have made efforts to restore the building that he depicted in Early Sunday Morning. It made me wonder how can I capture the feeling and essence of a place to communicate to others? As a designer I can create strategies to keep the authenticity of a place alive, and to get people interested in historical and cultural concerns. Luigi Fusco Girard says in The Human Sustainable City, “The historical and cultural heritage, representing the collective memory of the city, it’s specificity and identity, must be preserved and promoted as a key contribution to the humanization of our cities.”

Part of me thinks that my thesis needs to look at decades of urban planning in NYC and all historical factors that contribute to a specific neighborhood. Along those lines, one of my ideas for a visual project is to take a streetscape (on Rivington or nearby) that explores all of the buildings, storefronts and signage, research all of the historical factors and engage the community in conversation.

Another project I’m considering is taking close-up shots of building details and place them along a specific route on a map. These details can also be interpreted by drawing or another medium. I really want to focus on drawing and painting as my initial mediums and use those explorations to create a final design project. I need to let go of the idea of having this final finished product and let all of these explorations naturally lead to it. I find that it’s only through drawing the contours of an object or place that I recognize it’s true beauty. Drawing allows you to move beyond just looking to see and feel the relationships in space, and this could lead to rich visual investigations and who knows what applications down the road.

A few references I need to jot down from thesis advisors:
pritzkerprize.com — to understand how architecture is verbalized. Also Words and Buildings by Adrian Forty
Verbalizing the Visual by Michael Clarke
Delirious New York and Mutations by Rem Koolhas
Metropolis magazine (which I already love but need to look at more)
“Visual Acoustics” – a Jules Sherman documentary

Also:
The Architectural Review
Arch. publishers such as ACTAR
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
also look at how architecture and urban planning programs describe their missions and activities
ANY – Architecture NY (Vignelli-designed)
Tadao Ando
listen to interviews with Frank Gehry
check out architecture supply stores

I have many ideas for projects and have no idea where they will take me. Leigh Okies handed out an Anni Albers statement on designing when she visited our class last week. “We come to know in art that we do not clearly know where we will arrive in our work, although we set the compass, our vision; that we are lead in going along, by material and work process. We have plans and blueprints, but the finished work is still a surprise. We learn to listen to our voices; the yes or no of our material, our tools, our time.” I love when she writes “the yes or no of our material” – we have such a close relationship with our material and awareness allows us to listen when we need to change direction or continue following a path.

Oh, one more thing. My interests lie on the border of art and design, so another thing I want to explore is how these two fields interact and complement each other.

I like this promotional video from Social design site

This video from Social Design site caught my attention because of the succession of images and words. The type animation in the beginning and end of the video is disconnected from the overall feel, and could probably be eliminated or replaced in some way that ties in with the image sequence.

Framing the problem for Community Building

In our last meeting as a group, we began discussing the possibilities for communities to focus our efforts on. Newark is a great example of a place to focus large-scale projects such as the Brixton Village example, but we started realizing that we need to start close to home. A couple of us suggested that we focus on our community in Pratt CommD, and especially the integration of MS and MFA students as we begin this new program and move into the new space.

This is my attempt to frame the problem: Both MS and MFA students are moving to a new location, so the problem for everyone is adjusting to the work and community space. Another problem will be the integration of MS and MFA students. This is a unique situation to Pratt CommD, and one worthy of study to apply to other populations attempting to integrate. What are the differences in approach to their work/teaching between the two sets of students and faculty? What kind of bridges are there between the two programs? Since MFA workspace and classroom are separate from the MS space, how can we bridge that divide so that everyone feels a unified community spirit?

I just started thinking of ways to get people together and the first thing that comes to mind is creating a campaign. Something like “It’s all one CommD” or “We heart CommD” to show that even though there are two programs, it’s still one community.