Velvet Garage : Self-Reflection as Process / Research / Work
Follow @wip.ish on IG for accompanying images (Fig. 292 - 327).
When I first started my SMArchS AD degree at MIT in the fall of 2019, I thought I would be spending two years designing furniture-like objects. I had turned down a Master of Furniture of Design at RISD to pursue a more architectural approach to furniture / large scale objects at MIT, though I didn’t know what that meant - at all. I was, at that point, obsessed with architects who were designing things other than conventional architecture in the form of buildings, like Jonathan Muecke (Fig. 292), Ania Jarworska (Fig. 293 - 294) or Norman Kelley (Fig. 295). I had similar dreams of making architecture for myself in the form of strange objects that began to function spatially - not designing buildings that would never come to fruition the way I had my whole MArch degree.
There was an independence about architecture school that I loved that I saw as non-existent in most architectural careers. In school, we design buildings all by ourselves at our desks, but that would never happen outside of school - nor would I want it to. What I did want was time to explore what making architecture by “myself” could look like - that was why I had come to MIT in the first place. For the most part, I did make a lot of things from September 2019 to March 2020 (Fig. 296 - 298). In fact, the majority of my first semester was spent daily in the shops (Fig. 299) to the degree that every single night I came home, I smelled like sawdust or metal shavings (Fig. 300) - and I loved it.
However, my research was deeply - if not entirely - tied to MIT’s fabrication facilities, so much so that when we became remote, I wasn’t quite sure what the rest of my degree would look like. It was immediately clear that the act of making would have to look different : Producing anything would have to be smaller and slower (Fig. 301) even though I had previously hoped it would be bigger and faster (Fig. 302), and my work last spring did end up becoming so incredibly sloooooow (Fig. 303). However, it also became more thoughtful as a result of a lack of access to rapid prototyping : One particular project I was working on (Fig 304) was made entirely on my parents’ kitchen countertop. (Fig. 305). A body of work that probably would have taken no less than two weeks or so with the use of laser cutters and CNC-milling, ended up taking variousss monthsss to make entirely by hand. However, suddenly, I had a nightly audience of two I previously hadn’t taken the time to consider at all - ever : my parents.
That is, when my SMArchS degree became entirely remote, it gave me the ability to do what I had done so far away for so many years next to and in front of my family. It was weirdly eye-opening : Family and architecture had previously never collided for me, and suddenly I felt so aware of how separate those two parts of me had been the past-almost-ten years. I didn’t like it. I had become so good at speaking about architecture to other architects (Fig. 306), but I seemed to not be able to relate it in any way to my own family… I didn’t know how to speak about the work I had done to them because their value set didn’t overlap in any way with the one I had been functioning in.
A strange combination of working slowly, being surrounded by my parents, and taking part in the spring’s Self / Work workshop (Fig. 307) a year ago, led me to question what in the world I was doing and more importantly - why… Moreover, the beginning of quarantine in March, my maternal grandmother’s death in April (Fig. 308), and the brutal murder of George Floyd in May all forced huge changes in perspective : On a personal level, so much just didn’t make sense anymore, but similar reverberations were felt across the microcosm of architecture (Fig. 309) : It became clear there was a true lack of representation of any kind of otherness in architecture.
I came to feel that much of the way in which I had been operating within architecture was one of acceptance, rather than questioning, where I was suddenly struck with so many questions almost all at once : I wondered why we worked in the exhaustive and tireless way that we do, why we continually prioritize the same privileged precedents over and over, or why we typically don’t talk about architecture to anybody outside of architecture. Personally, I wanted to begin to approach architecture in a way that was entirely opposite to all of the ways in which I had been operating for so many years : I wanted to work in a way that felt healthy. I wanted to discard overused references that made my work innately inaccessible to those closest to me. And I wanted to talk about architecture with those I never before had : My family.
More a year later, it’s hard to put into words what has happened since I began to question myself, my work, and the academic realm within which I have been operating, but I’ll try to :
In January, I took over my parents garage and turned it into a studio / shop / set - I called it the Velvet Garage because of the velvet curtains that de-garaged the garage (Fig. 310) and made it into a space I could (happily) work in (Fig. 311), a space to make large objects in (Fig. 312), and a space to film those objects (Fig. 313).
In February, I began the re-representation of old work by turning previous projects into written stories (Fig. 314 - 317) - stories that began with the universal, the everyday in order to arrive at the architectural. These were stories that anyone could enter into.
In March, I began to transform those stories into (annoyingly) precise moving images, or tiny movies / short films that I hoped would be so mesmerizing, you had to keep watching. I reinterpreted my words into story-boards (Fig. 318 - 322), hoping the montage of symbolic imagery would begin to create an emotional experience. I used found objects, all of them universal images, but many of them were more personally charged, like my grandmother’s engagement ring I inherited (Fig. 323) last year when she passed away in April.
In April, I designed and built furniture-like objects (Fig. 324) via a construction system I learned about through a sculptor: Simone Bodmer-Turner (Fig. 325), who was really recreating a system she first saw via recently deceased Valentine Schlegel (Fig. 326). The objects I ended up having time to make were few, but they nevertheless began to make an appearance into the films I was working on.
In May, I presented my thesis in 30 minutes (Fig. 327). In that half hour, I ended up showing 12 minutes of footage to invited guests Tatiana Bilbao and Luis Ortega Govela (co-author of the book, Garage, the book that made me consider interning in garage in the first place). The conversation that followed was one I could have only dreamt about : Meaning, memory, vulnerability, identity in architectural representation, and radical pedagogies were scattered topics that began to overlap and intertwine in a way I could have never considered. It was an enlightening conversation I’m glad Zoom recorded to the Cloud. However, by far the best moment of all, was seeing my parents step out of their room, where they had been watching me present : Their faces, wet with tears, made clear they had understood every word, every nuanced meaning, and every personal layer. They were floored, and I was floored that they were floored. I had never successfully shared my work with my family, and I wasn’t sure I would succeed in doing so, so that moment in which I realized I had communicated such an important part of myself with both my parents, I will truly never forget - and I know they won’t either.
Follow @wip.ish on IG for accompanying images (Fig. 292 - 327).
In both small and big ways, WIP-ish has allowed me to learn and be inspired by so many friends and colleagues : @hanghar taught me you don’t really know how to do something until you do it (Fig. 328), which was hugely motivating in deciding to hang a velvet curtain in my parents’ garage, @puuuulp taught me you can make objects inspired by anything (Fig. 329), and I’m on the brink of doing so, @fullhowz taught me to continually share work again and again (Fig. 330) because it will allow you to reach a clarity you didn’t know was even possible, @martaniabags taught me that it is possible to collaborate with family (Fig.331). And @kendal.latham taught me that as architects we really design experiences (Fig. 332) more than we do spaces.
I hope WIP-ish has been as inspiring for you as it has been for me.