“Real” Research : A Process that Prioritizes the “Real” over the Representational

Follow @wip.ish on IG for accompanying images (Fig. 191 - 221).

For this episode of WIP-ish, I wanted to share a bit of my own work as a SMArchS AD. Because my thesis is currently a huge WIP, I’ve decided to share a couple of precedents, objects, and observations that have hugely influenced the current research I am doing as a way to show you my process, rather than the end product. 

I. Representation as Construction : 

Last semester, I made a (very) short film inspired by a painting made by Geert Vanoorlé (Fig. 191). In the shape of rhombus, Vanoorlé’s painting's precise positioning and blue color tricks you into believing you are seeing through a window to the sky. But you’re not : In reality, you are just looking at a painting on a wall. The video I made played with this idea of object (Fig. 192), void (Fig. 193), and the flattening of a three-dimensional shape (Fig. 194). 

I had never really worked in video, but doing so made me start to think about other mediums we don’t typically engage in. More specifically, Vanoorlé’s painting made me question whether other architects ever paint as a part of their practice. I suppose I found painting compelling because, like video, it is a medium we can directly author - by which I mean, we can quite literally make it ourselves. 

I very quickly came across Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen’s paintings (Fig. 195). In particular, I was intrigued by their series titled Exterior, which features very colorful and poetic interior scenes that are cropped in a way that feels both odd and simultaneously thoughtful (?) (Fig. 196). However, my biggest question in looking at these was : Why? Why did they paint these? How did they think of them as architects? 

An interview with Pezo and Sofia in their book, Exterior, explains how they conceptualize these paintings that are conceived of as “final products,” rather than representations of spaces to come, the way we typically would think of our drawings and models (in pursuit of a real building) : 

At the same time, we do produce flat images that are conceived as ‘final products’. Yet again, they are not the mere visual information… They are selective, close-up depictions of rooms, we can also confirm that they do not refer to any particular case… They are also a physical construction : an oil on canvas, a pencil on paper, a wooden or clay model, etc. Therefore our level of awareness is just the same. The work we produce is both material and intellectual, but never only visual. [1]

So rather than consider these paintings as depictions of “real” spaces (by which I mean spaces that physically exist or have an intention to eventually exist) Pezo and Sofia consider these paintings themselves as the intended and “real” construction. In this case, the “construction” consists of paint on a stretched canvas stapled to a wooden heavy wooden frame.

This notion of representation as construction (by which I mean “real” construction made by architects themselves), is really intriguing to me - especially as someone who is fascinated with fabrication. As an architect, I am primarily interested in the production of buildings, but the immediacy of our architectural representation has become simultaneously compelling to me - in particular, the physicality of our scale models we all know how to make so well. Personally, I’m interested in an architecture we can make entirely ourselves… 

II. Object as Architecture or Architecture as Object

When I first arrived at MIT, I found myself obsessed with the then recent Friedman Benda Gallery exhibit curated by Juan García Mosqueda titled, No-Thing : An Exploration into Aporetic Architectural Furniture (Fig. 197). The exhibit featured the work of nine architects, but the work was… confused (Fig. 198). In philosophy, aporia is the state of confusion or doubt, and it was in this sense that these architects showcased furniture pieces that… didn’t quite know what they were (Fig. 199). That is, these enigmatic furniture objects asked their users to actively engage them in order to determine the function of them on their own terms (Fig. 200). 

These objects all approach the concept of aporia differently, but many of them have more than one function : They appear to look like something while being something else. For example, take Ania Jaworska’s Freestanding Bookshelf (Fig. 201). Typically, we think of something like a bookshelf as located up against a wall, but Ania’s curved object functions both as a shelf and a room divider.

While objects like Ania’s really excite me because they are architectural logic applied to a much smaller, more tangible scale, the fact that they are fabricated out-of-house is personally less exciting (Fig. 202 - 203). Don’t get me wrong - I think the process of collaborating with a craftsperson or fabricator is hugely interesting and exciting, but it does contain its own obstacles, primarily that immediacy (or lack of it) I’m so obsessed with overcoming : 

For example, this summer I designed an open ended object, or an object that changes depending how you “finish” it.  (Fig. 204). The  open-ended chair is inspired by my dad’s passion for gardening - in fact, he’s so passionate, he often ends up overwatering his plants. After watching him over a number of months (during quarantine), I realized that he often ended up overwatering his plants because he just wants to be surrounded by them, so I designed a chair in hopes of creating that environment for him. The chair, designed to be made out of steel tubes doubles as a kind vase (Fig. 205). As a result, it’s a chair that is different depending on what you place in it. Now, while I’ve been working with a steel fabricator in NY to make this chair, the process has been… disappointing. COVID working conditions are hugely to blame, but regardless, I’m on hold to receive shop drawings I should have received months ago… 

This feeling of disappointment of not being able to make the thing I’ve designed is maybe my Achilles heel : I’m oddly distracted from conventional architecture in pursuit of this more immediate version of it. I just want to make it myself! I think it’s why I’m interested in writing WIP-ish and learning how things are made or even conceptually conceived of, so I can be closer to the things I design. So I can make them and bring them to life myself rather than spend hours making beautiful representations of something that does not exist. 

But before MIT went remote, I was already making “real” objects (Fig. 206 - 207) - by which I mean, I was making things themselves rather than the representation of them. By the way, though this might be clear, I’ll say it just to be safe : My interest in making things myself means buildings are completely out of the question, which is why I’m continually drawn to the kind of work displayed in the Aporetic Architectural Furniture exhibit, and why I was interested in something like Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s paintings : I’m continually intrigued by objects smaller than buildings that architects are engaging in designing, but more importantly, I’m interested in whether they are making these objects themselves… and why.

All of things I was making at MIT last fall and spring before the pandemic (Fig. 208), though, were quite small because they were all completely based on fabrication methods that don’t quite scale up, at least not in a way I can handle myself. For example, I took Jen’s IAP course 4.S14 Materials Fabrication, in which I learned how to sand cast aluminum (Fig. 209). At the end of the course, I made an enormous 2’x2’ flask  (Fig. 210) that once filled with sand already felt impossible to carry, cast, and de-mold on my own (Fig. 211) and the resulting cast wasn’t even that big (Fig. 212). That’s not to say this fabrication process doesn’t scale :  Anne Holtrop, for example, has been known to cast beautiful irregular building components out of aluminum (Fig. 213), but these objects begin to incorporate huge teams because of their enormous undertaking (214). It’s just too big (Fig. 215)! I’m interested in a smaller scale. 

I’ll close with the deceased French sculptor, Valentine Schlegel. Schlegel primarily worked in clay and produced ceramic sculptures (Fig. 216), but she eventually began engaging an architectural scale (Fig. 217). Schlegel would often hand-deliver finished pieces to her clients and she would take it upon herself to site her sculpture within their homes. When Schlegel was unsuccessful in finding a satisfying location for them, she would suggest sculpting a space for them in their home using a wood and plaster construction system (Fig. 218 - 219) : The result was a beautiful sculpted looking space, of which I’m in awe because these spaces were often made all by herself (Fig. 220). 

My research is looking to appropriate Schlegel’s fabrication method, but this time to make free standing architectural objects that I’ll design the same way I would a building by considering things like : site, program, scale, and specified user / use. I suppose the conclusion I’m starting to make is that scale does not determine the impact of our intervention, it only determines our approach, but we can also suggest our own scale. 

III. Conclusion 

I could go on, but I’ll stop here. I will say this though : 

In general I’m interested in questioning the ways in which we work and how those frameworks alone design huge parts of the work that we make - sometimes without us even knowing it. Consider the “Final Review” format : All of the work done throughout the semester is somehow meant to be formatted into a minute presentation at the end of the semester in which we share representations of a building that doesn’t exist to a strictly architectural audience. In an essay written by John May titled, Under Present Conditions Our Dullness Will Intensify, he compares the Final Review format with the American legal system : 

The photograph is from 1946 [(Fig. 221)]. It depicts an utterly novel event - the “open jury” architectural examination - which in the ensuing postwar years came to rapidly replace the closed-door evaluations characteristic of the Beaux Arts pedagogic model, and has since attained universal acceptance in our schools. Linger for a moment on the student’s face. Imagine that his bewildered expression is not the sort of momentary surprise we see so regularly today, provoked, as it often is, by the adolescent behavior of one’s supposed mentors, but rather belongs to a more generalized and sweeping shock, induced by the sudden realization that his objects now require legal counsel. In a brief historical window between 1945 and 1960, an act of making that previously went by the name of “architecture” was suddenly and universally transplanted to an institutional framework that took as its basis the American legal system. From the moment forward, that same framework has implicitly demanded that all architectural intellection adhere to a form of reasoning, that is, at its base, juridicial. [2]

Have you ever wondered why we design the way we design? Or how formatting our work, in part, designs the work itself, or changes it? Or why are our models approximately table-top size? All and more of these concepts have largely been designed for us, and sit largely unquestioned, but they are the kinds of questions I’m interested in answering for myself. 

More specifically, I’ve recently been considering how inaccessible the way we talk about our work is to anyone outside of our profession - in particular our families :  Can we conceive of our work differently to appeal to an audience that hasn’t been trained the way we have? As a result, I’m finding myself interested in approaching work emotionally, not intellectually.

Follow @wip.ish on IG for accompanying images (Fig. 191 - 221). On that note, I also want to know what, where, and how you make! DM or email me at wip.ishhh@gmail.com with unsolicited WIP images or #wip posts with an optional caption and IG handle to be featured on the WIP-ish IG : 

This week’s featured WIP is @dearthomasbarger. I previously showed some of his WIPs (Fig. 36) on WIP-ish’s second post : Glossier : Most Tags Lead to WIPs. 

As I’ve been looking at Schlegel’s work, I’ve realized there is a parallel way of working, but instead of using plaster, using paper pulp. Whats interesting to see here is that while the main construction is made out of wood, in this case, foam is used to further shape the pieces (Fig. 222) before their final material is applied. I’ve also found artists who use cardboard instead of wood, and while I couldn’t tell you what the paper pulp recipe is, it seems fairly common / easy. I love that @dearthomasbarger shares his process photos because seeing his final pieces, one would neeeever imagine this is what lies underneath all of that colorful paper pulp (Fig. 223).

Speaking about pulp (!), another kind of @puuuulp will be next episode’s main feature…

[1]Pezo von Ellrichshausen. Exterior. 2017. 

[2]May, John. Project Journal. Issue Three (Spring 2014). Under Present Conditions Our Dullness Will Intensify.