BODIES IN SPACE

Fall 2020
Academic
GSD 1201_Core III: INTEGRATE
Harvard Graduate School of Design
​Instructor: Jennifer Bonner

There has always been a human fascination with particularly placed objects in particular spaces. Most recently, the media has fixated on the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance (of copycats), of a metal monolith in the middle of a Utah desert. This project is speculating on the status of the object in form and space-making, and postulates on a possible architecture of extrusions. It touches on shape/form, figure/ground, scale, and blurred lines between object/architecture, public/private, and the digital/physical. 

The client outlines the needs of the Municipal Art Society as: private office space, public office space, art gallery, seminar rooms, café, and a library, among other programming. The project responds to this brief through finding ways of synthesizing various programs and thus their spatial articulation. 

Perhaps as a response to our current reality of an entirely remote and digital architectural education, this project reexamines various methods of representation, reassesses conventions of office space, and the viability of using objects to produce architectural spaces. In using architecture and exploiting its modes of representation, it begins to turn itself into a work of art. ​

EXERCISE 01_PROVOCATION

The project looked to fashion advertisements as precedents, namely those by Acne Studios. Acne's Founder and Creative Director Jonny Johansson started the brand with the intent to combine a myriad of interests ranging from photography, art, architecture, and contemporary culture. He funnels this collection of creative interests into designing fashion, magazines, furniture, books, and exhibitions. With such a diverse range of inspiration, it explains why I always felt the brand held a very particular attitude about bodies, color, and composition, as evident in their ad campaigns.

As a response to this kind of posturing, I created a series of bodies or figures and situated them in space, as an exercise on form, color, and composition.

A POSSIBLE ARCHITECTURE OF EXTRUSIONS

The aim is to normalize funky extruded forms as objects and architectures, perhaps similar to the way influencers "normalize" certain trends, elevating them to something coveted, but also some catalog order, off-the-shelf product. It takes the act of not taking itself seriously, seriously.

The digital/physical model shows the general massing strategy of a series of stacked bars, alternating in X & Y directions and in materiality (from a massive stone to light, frosted glass).

DIGITAL PHYSICAL MODEL

A GAME OF DIFFERENT SCALES

The project employs the extrusions at a variety of scales, including furniture and in the representation of the material palette.

FROM OBJECT TO ARCHITECTURE ??

Moving from extrusion into "architecture," the way these are formally and materially expressed, how they are combined or booleaned, and how apertures perforate the form, produce a myriad of different spatial typologies. And the way furniture is outfitted along or against the grain of the space also affords a variety of architectural experiences.

AN OFFICE BUILDING FOR THE MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY OF NYC

In line with MAS's mission, the art and exhibitions are integrated where anyone (including people coming to work here everyday, those visiting the building, or people just passing by on their way to the nearby Washington Square Park) is constantly exposed to art in its many forms. Exhibition space, a theater, and sculptural pieces, woven into the building's fabric.

PHOTOREALISM//SURREALISM

These images are more "real," or taking itself a bit more seriously. Though rendered in a more photorealistic style, it still maintains its "objectness" with how the floors have been animated with people and plants rendered as objects.