Design Social Accidents (2013)
Use Arduino, This proposes an excess that releases the potential of an individual’s inner social energy by a designed accident. Today’s people communicate through machines like smartphones or computers and this phenomenon means disconnections of individuals in our physical society. Excess in my proposal wakes the potential of social energy up. Excess not only causes an oral communication, but also other physical expressions are caused. Additionally, an eXtra Small scale of changes in a big scale of a location brings a widely spreadable seed to root our desires toward social communications and to bloom better possibilities of physical communications by designed accident.
Dance Stage - Silo City was built for massive grain transmissions in the past, and most space of Silo City does not function and has long recession time in the present. Prot, one of buildings in Silo City, is a space occupied by grain equipment without any operation and provides less regulated architectural roles with widely open space. My Dance Stage displays in Prot and encourages visitors’ activities by interruptions. Dancing represents a passion of social communications from users facing a wall from each side.
Fun House in Amusement Park - Central Terminal was used for transitions for people and loads, and it is now evacuated with no function. My proposal in Central Terminal is a transformation whole central terminal as Six-Flags, amusement park. And a location where my wall displays is main hall on ground floor as fun house, one of programs in amusement park. XS exists as a part in a big scale of transformation. Walls’ movements force people move or stimulate them to be against to the force. Varieties of reactions represent their inner social energy and passion toward their society.
Crossing MAZE - A Bridge on Erie Canal is currently a connection between residential areas. People are forced to cross this bridge if they want to move another side of Canal. Traffics are always happened on a limited allowed space. Unplanned accidents cause random values and these result social chemical activities. My walls on a bridge interrupt passengers’ pathways and these overlap on others. Unexpected meeting means unexpected destiny.
Walls displays zit-sag to make visitors move around, and voice activates a wall to slide another side like automated door in store. There would be two different types of people’s movement: one is following opening pathway and another is making own pathway by activating walls. These two different activities happen in one place between people and random activities cause unexpected meetings and environmental changes.
Design by Numbers (2013)
Use Processing, create digital patterns by a variety of codes.
The initial motive of studied structure was Gothic as a high pitched ceiling and rib-arches.
It started from 2D line pattern drawings and developed later as 3D structures with complexities.
I used void and solid space by a single structural element as pipe.
Field Condition (2012)
There is no 'Completeness' in space.
Although the idea of ‘field condition’ has been applied into the modern architectures like skyscraper since the steel frame allowed the larger horizontal spatial expansion, the neutral space has practiced in the early city plans of the United States. This is because the principle idea of the plans was established to achieve the freedom of religion. The large number of immigrants of Puritans influenced its development to get the freedom from Spaniards’ oppression. Therefore, the early grid of the city plan in Philadelphia takes the neutral sense, infinitely spreading out. The original idea was from Roman city grid having the strong hierarchy under the powerful concept of the orders; however, maybe Americans saw the vision of the freedom then the notion of the grid.
The United States is an example to demonstrate about the neutral space with the democracy in big and small scale. Especially, during late 1800s and early 1900s, the new architectural theories and styles happened and overwhelmed architectural field. In the reading, Ultramodern by Robert Smithson, he talks about the ambition of the neutral elements being able to lead the various effects of the neutral quality in the exterior as much as the interior does. The windows began to dominate the facades of skyscrapers like the mirror framing to contain different images through the repetition of the sameness in interior. In addition, during early and middle 1900s, Ludwig Mies van de Rohe practiced the extreme expression of the neutral quality. Convention Hall, called McCormick Center in Chicago Illinois, has the elements of the neutral quality. The building stands to be occupied and to produce very different types of the activities, not designed for the certain programs. Even though his architectural practices took the hybrid formation between total design and neutral space because there were still singularities, like La Valletta’s saying “Architecture means nothing, as architecture of the signifier rather than the signified,” in the reading, Architecture and Disjunction, Mies seemed like mirroring this idea into the building design and achieved the maximized effects of the seamless through the sameness, the limitless, and the repetitive: there is no hierarchy to classify between floor and ceiling with repetitive façade elements with glasses.
The neutral space or the field condition means the non-morphological space. In other words, do not indicate any specific form of space, but things occupying it matter. Donald Judo says in the reading, Condition, “Field conditions cannot claim to produce a systematic theory of architectural form or composition…” Therefore, the field condition would be the practical condition of space. Andy Warhol in his factory used this idea. He painted whole interior as silvers including all the elements in the room to blur the boundaries between those and to eliminate social hierarchy. The neutral space was created by the minimal initiation to contain the maximal characters of the activities.
The School of Architecture teaches the students to master the design like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Total design. They always have to take all kinds of the consideration in every aspect of the qualities that will happen inside/outside building; therefore, it leads to the ignorance of the potencies that would happen in the space. Field condition has already practiced by many architects and successfully applied into building design for better creativities of programs. So I think that the field condition is very powerful and the universal concept for all kinds of designs. I will remember it to not be a Poor Rich Man! There is no completeness in space.
Proposal Field Condition
The illuminating boxes in the room create the invisible boundaries to eliminate the characteristics of elements when visitors enter to the box. The light fully paints visitors’ body to make them the neutral condition. In the other words, the light synchronizes the visitors and the environments as one quality of element such as being reddish.
The floor boxes have senses to recognize weights when visitors stand on, and then the high intensity of light is on from ceiling.
