becoming unbecoming an other form

becoming/unbecoming an other formchoi ho

2013

university of manitobamaster of architecture thesis

advisor: ralph glor

01 becoming/unbecoming an other form

02 howdy old first ward residents

03 in the garage with noreen

04 the misfit

05 the third typology

06 the model

07 an other site

08 an other monument

09 an other texas

10 an other invention

11 an other unit

12 becoming/unbecoming an other form:the 300 ohio street housing project

table of contents

101 becoming/unbecoming an other form

cities are amalgamations of ever-altering forms, composed of primary elements, monuments, embedded artifacts, and the present urban fabric. it is the very complexity of this structure of cities that calls on the tasks of examining architectures processes and of demanding a comprehensible experience of the city.

a particular and perhaps uncertain condition presents itself between buffalos silo city, a dense cluster of concrete grain elevators situated along the waterfront and the tightly knit working class residents of buffalos old first ward neighbourhood. the boundaries of the city, here, is one where residential and industrial areas co-exist, interlaced and revealing the innate characteristics of this place and time. any sensible architectural proposition, then, must not fill, fix, or romanticize these sites but serve to author a strategy for potential new inhabitations and the license to invent within these boundary conditions.

the agenda of becoming/unbecoming an other form will thus begin to locate its rationale and manifestations internally, in the patterns of the city, to stress a critical position for the continuity of history and forms. the architecture of the city will firmly derive from typology and the city itself; buffalos old first ward and silo city, matched together, will be broken down as urban artifacts, that will be types, that will be recomposed, that will generate an other meaning from this reassembling of the city. finally, becoming/unbecoming an other form will be a pursuit of that which undoes (as well as what makes) and will embrace the fracturing and opening up of the past and the present, to what will bring forth an other.

302 howdy old first ward residents

as a starting point, to critically engage with the site, i decided to write a letter to the residents of buffalos old first ward. this letter, in short, spoke of my first impressions about the neighbourhood with its adjacent boundaries, my desire to meet and converse with residents to gather later impressions, as well as particular activities i had in mind all with an intent of becoming invested and intimate with the site, to document and project my ideas onto this place.

5howdy old first ward resident!

nobody was in this afternoon, boo.so i leave you this letter in hopes that we may be in contact soon.

my name is choi.

im a master of architecture student at the university of manitoba in winnipeg, canada. there are 12 of us visiting buffalo this week until sunday, my colleagues and my professor that is.

im interested in studying/documenting buffalos first ward neighbourhood for my studio project. just yesterday, my class participated in a 5-hour walking tour of the grain elevators; despite the fatigue and hunger, i was astounded by these objects in the landscape. in your very yard fronts/back yards.

a week is not merely enough time to be familiar with buffalo let alone a neighbourhood as unique as the first ward. i must be efficient with my time here and work as best as i can with my first and later impressions of the first ward.

my first step is to narrow my site of study to the residences that border within ohio street/st clair street/south street.

now this is where you come in!

it is important for me to meet some of the people that live in the first ward. those who work and play in the first ward are also crucial but secondary to my studies at the moment.

it would be my pleasure to have a discussion with you regarding the first ward (tell me anything) as well as the developments/existence of the grain elevators on site, in particular, the standard (adm/pillsbury) elevator that faces your home.

i would also hope that you will allow me to photograph views from your property (both outdoors and indoors); for example, i would want to document how the standard elevator is experienced from your living room couch, lying down in your bed, or from your porch etc.

i understand this sounds very intimate or intrusive depending on how you see it. so please do not hesitate to contact me via phone/text/email to further discuss my intentions and how you can assist me in my studio project.

if it is more appropriate, i will be at the ohio street: the situation is now, this is an architectural panel discussion on the future of ohio street tonight (october 18th) 7pm-830pm at the first ward community centre on 62 republic street. i will be wearing a grey collared sweater with burgundy jeans and a blue backpack with a yellow maple leaf...please look for me, tap my shoulder, and introduce yourself.

my contact information:phone/text: 1 (647) 209-9795 (canada)hostel buffalo niagara: (716) 852-5222 (room 302)email: [email protected]

thanks ahead of time, i hope to meet you soonchoi ho

7Well those are the pic I took from in the house, backyard' and side of the house hope they will help u with your study's let me kn if u got them! Just tex back!! U left a paper in my mailbox 81 Louisiana st Buffalo NY

tinas reply, email exchange, 2012

within an hour after delivering my letter to the residences bordering ohio street/st clair street/south street, i got my first response! a brief text message from tina with an attached photo as a bonus. from the onset i was overjoyed because one response is better than zero response but i later realized and to my dismay that tina must not have read my letter in detail. i specifically pointed out that it was me who wanted to take on the role of photographer, to have that amount of control in the direction of my site documenting. as the evening progressed and with no additional responses, i resorted to making do. in the end, i not only claimed authorship over tinas words and photographs, i also gained from and saw value in this unforeseen.

903 in the garage with noreen

i received a second response to my letter! despite the usual tentativeness/anxiety to meet and talk, i had a welcoming, insightful, and documented experience in the garage with noreen (and her friend/neighbour kathy, her husband tim, and even the dog). noreen made tea, she shared to me her and her families stories of living/playing/working in the old first ward, she was upfront about the conflicting issues current to the neighbourhood and silo city, as well, noreen let me into her home to take in first hand what she sees and hears every day living in such close proximity to buffalos concrete grain elevators.

two quotes stood out from our conversation in the garage. one from noreen and the other from kathy, respectively. these words resonated a specific narrative of this site; a place began to emerge:

it (the neighbourhood) did hit its lowest spot...enough people know it now...worth sticking out and coming back to

to destroy them (concrete grain elevators) for sake of destroying them would be stupid, just stupid

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without silo city, these places, and the local residents of the old first ward where the concrete grain elevators stand, would lose much of their human meaning and community identification.

george o. carney, grain elevators in the united states and canada: functional or symbolic?, 1995

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misfit \mis-,fit also mis-,fit\ n.

1. something of the wrong size or shape for its purpose 2. unable to adapt to their circumstances 3. not suited in behaviour or attitude to a particular social environment

04 the misfit

returning to the notion of the unforeseen, my attention was placed back on the photograph tina had texted me. admitting that i would not have captured a photograph as such, revealing the windows screen meshing for example, the blurred image began to reveal and occupy a singular scale and form in spite of what my eyes knew to be true. working with the term misfit, which stemmed from a previous project at the scale of the body (unmaking brent bell), i looked to further correlate, explore, and define the singularity of this perceived scale and form that unknowingly presented itself anew.

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found object, retrieved from kijiji ad, found keys

site, jeans belonging to brent bell new boundaries, unmaking my pants and brent bells jeans

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1. locate a site, a terrain vague, containing at least one boundary/border condition or fault line (site of rapidchange). scale is indeterminate (a city, a landscape, a body, a topography)

2. unmake your object on, in, around, under, over, and/or through the site. this will effectively become a way offraming your own research, as well as your own index of a site, and suggest how we might irrigateterritories with potential.

unmaking brent bell, instructions from 1.2 unmaking project, the city & the city, ralph glor

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the misfit (drawing) was produced relying heavily on a intuitive process. the parts that make up the misfit drew from various contexts including geographical/physical attributes particular to the site, the histories of the old first ward and silo city, american vernacular housing typologies, the modern movements ode to the monument, theories on aesthetics (the beautiful/the ugly), etc..

after composing a number of scales to be intentionally viewed as one scale, one form, the misfit drawing revealed parallels between the scale of the house and the scale of a single concrete grain elevator storage bin.

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05 the third typology

the nature of the city is central to the model of the third typology. what transpires for buffalos old first ward and silo city is the ordinary notion of the traditional city as a continuous fabric, that is to say, the city provides the material for classification, and the forms of its artifacts provide the basis for recomposition. the city is regarded as a whole, its past and present revealed in its physical composition. hence, the third typology is not built up out of separate elements, not assembled out of objects classified according to use, social ideology, or technical characteristics: it stands complete and ready to be decomposed into fragments.

this transformation of type will come into being from four processes and parameters: invention, influence and imitation, seduction by image, and intuition

firstly, invention will seek to not deprive the original of the material for (type) classification or the forms of its urban artifacts. secondly, the influence and imitation of types will not be a source of unease, which usually comes hand and hand in matters that confront the tradition of the production of the architecture of the city, instead, type will be the primary component providing the rules for the model. thirdly, seduction-by-image will allow us to perceive the third typology as wholly new entities that take their communicative authority and potential critical force from its very understanding of the transformation of types. finally, the process of intuition will be a means to depart from old and familiar design methods, to demonstrate the old first wards becoming and silo citys unbecoming an other form.

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the first typology, developed out of the rationalist philosophy of the enlightenment and initially articulated by marc antoine laugier, proposed that a natural starting point for design was to be found in the model of the primitive hut

the second typology, having come out of the need to confront the question of mass production, and most evidently stated by le corbusier, proposed that the model of architectural design should be founded in the production process itself

finally, during the dawn of post modernism, an interest in the forms and structure of pre-industrial cities came about, which again raised the matter of typology in architecture. the city would be the locus of concern for the third typology. the city as it stands can be taken apart in pieces, urban facts as aldo rossi refers to in the architecture of the city, which can be types; these pieces can then be recomposed in various ways. with this approach, certain types can also be used for other functions than they were originally designed and made for; it is then within this fundamental reassembling of the city where meaning is produced.

anthony vidler, the third typology, 1977

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marc-antoine laugier, frontispiece of essai sur larchitecture, the primitive hut, 1755

reyner banham describes the gradual transition of images of specific built works of architecture from a highly localized mode of information structuring (i.e. trade publications/local newspapers) to one that over time became sanctioned by the discipline, as seen by subsequent republishings and repurposings: walter gropius relied on the images (of grain elevators) to support his argument in favour of a fresh sensibility, while le corbusier altered several images (see missing classical building from image above) to bring them closer to his aesthetic preferences

mike christenson, viewpoint: from the unknown to the known: transitions in the architectural vernacular, 2011

leon krier, architecture choice or fate, civitas: the complete city, 1998

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intuition acknowledges the reals capacity to be otherwise, its ability to become more and other

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invention is liberty within rulesevery invention consists in a new combination of preexisting elementsone

invents what does not exist in physical reality

an other crawlspace

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the original sense of the form, the layers of accrued implication deposited by time and human experience cannot be lightly brushed away. rather, the carried meanings of these types may be used to provide a key to their newly invested meanings

anthony vidler, the third typology, 1977

beginning from the foundation, literally, my attention focussed on slip forming, a commonly used method to raise concrete in grain elevators; i began with the c.f. haglin slip form. i would also mention that i intuitively took to starting from the ground up based on my conversation in the garage with noreen, where kathy had answered my question of what would you want to do to your home?: ild start from ground up...i dont have a basement...(just a) crawlspace between dirt and the underside of my subfloor.

key transformations occurred along the process of exploring/making this third typology. first of all, rather than building up the form utilizing the haglin slip form in increments at the original scale of a grain elevator (about 3-4 feet per pour), i decided to work with the 2 feet crawlspace dimensions kathy alluded to in our talks. as well, this type began to take on a new form when i decided to make do with the materials i had available to me resulting in the planks for the slip form being overlapped rather than set side by side; instinctively, the patterning on the new form reminded me of typical siding used for homes in the old first ward. the outcome was this back and forth demonstration of scales and form, from the modern silo storage bin, to the becoming neighbourhood, to the american vernacular house, and back to the city.

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06 the model

matter-of-factness is the concept behind the model. mis-fittingly so, the model begins from that which is not real/already existing. by superimposing the two images of an other crawlspace and the original (overlapped) formwork, a new and other boundary was formed and made available for examination. i then proceeded to repeat my previous processes and parameters in an attempt to create the model at the scale of a house (noreens house) and to further attempt to integrate a darkroom program for the house. the latter developed from wanting to provide a privileged space within the interior of the home for the photographer/owner to view their photographs of the exterior becoming of the old first ward. additionally, the intended forms of the model were to sensibly gesture an efficiency (with form) and qualities of light and dark spaces (with material).

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the word type represents not so much the image of a thing to be copied or perfectly imitated as the idea of an element that must itself serve as a rule for the modelthe model, understood in terms of the practical execution of art, is an object that must be repeated such as it is; type, on the contrary, is an object according to which one can conceive works that do not resemble one another at all. everything is precise and given in the model; everything is more or less vague in the type

aldo rossi on a.c. quatremere de quincys definition of type, the architecture of the city, 1982

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the objects are constructions with their own aesthetic. to abstract is to see the objects detached from their original use, as mere things speaking through their pure materiality; to liberate them from the function they played during their specific history

maros krivy, industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of architecture in the works of gordon matta-clark, robert smithson and bernd and hilla becher, 2010

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07 an other site

in order to arrive at an architecture of the city and to further develop my task of presenting the becoming/unbecoming of an other form for buffalos old first ward and silo city, i logically moved forward to a more appropriate scale for the site at hand. notably, this task was framed around knowing a series of vacancies and infrastructural boundaries exist with few parallels in this area of the city. as well, i wanted my research, precedence, critical site analysis, and projections for the site to determine an other site.

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1. intentions - site/time lapse: make a new composite site drawing using your existing work as a starting point that discusses your research and qualitative intentions for the site. the site is the frame or the place-setting of the work that you will now do. your individual propositions will be lived out here. it is on this shared space of this drawing that you will continue to advance your investigation.

composite site drawing, instructions from 2.1 reassessment project, the city & the city, ralph glor

the composite site drawing pinpoints three scales that carry significant value to buffalo. the first scale draws on the citys historical radial plan outlining the major thruways and critical access points into the city and passing buffalos old first ward and silo city. the second scale sites the old first ward neighbourhood showing its proximity to the river, silo city, and the extent of buffalos downtown core. the third scale looks at silo city bringing forth its massive presence and clustering along a great stretch of the buffalo river.

going back to the second scale of the neighbourhood, two sites of potential emerged in the composite site drawing. the first potential was a multi-tower social housing project. since i had put a focus and effort on the residents of the old first ward it seemed fitting to pick this site for further investigation. the second potential was a series of vacant lots just off ohio street. as a highly discussed corridor of the old first ward, ohio street has raised countless adaptive reuse, reprogramming, and reappropriating strategies.

with the immense opportunities/contexts afforded with the ohio street potential, i selected 300 ohio street as an other site. the site currently sits idle as a vacant gas station bordering father conway park, the buffalo river, silo city off in the distance, and roadside to thruways that enter and leave the city.

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as a preliminary schematic proposition, 300 ohio street set out to have the architect redefine the agenda and logic of the monument, to highlight the idea of silo citys unbecoming. an other monument suggested that the architect was not to resort to romance in nostalgia by the form of the concrete grain elevators to the exclusion of function and process; silo city will be recognized as used places of the city. to state this another way, silo citys concrete grain elevators will not be monuments but processes. what makes an elevator an elevator is not that it embodies a distinct building type but that it embodies the technology for moving grain to the top of storage bins. the terms therefore of an other monument will value usefulness over refinement, prosperity over perception, and commerce over art. the results will bear witness and gain insight into the inherited way of life that sustains and propels buffalos old first ward and silo city.

08 an other monument

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heavy

light

light

heavy

300 ohio streets an other monument will have the physical make up of a silo city grain elevator: the primary material will be concrete and another yet to be determined material will contrast the heavy and permanent nature of concrete. furthermore, 300 ohio street will be introduced as a mixed-use residential and commercial complex available to the old first ward and as a compliment to the bustling ohio street. the desire will be to maintain an other monument as that which manifests foremost usefulness, prosperity, and commerce.

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thin wall

thickwall

interior

exterior

view from court yard/downtown

heavy/permanence/silo citylight heavy

1F commercial

residential

residential?

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300 ohio street father conway park

downtown

old first ward

river

silo city

silo city

pushing a new program for redeveloping buffalos becoming old first ward requires a marking of the unbecoming silo city with an other monument. the aim of shedding the historicists presumptions around which the traditional monument establishes itself is to embrace the impossibility of inhabiting that moment (that place, that time).

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The Pruitt-Igoe Myth tells the story of a public housing project in St. Louis that opened in the mid-1950s, part of the postwar dream of replacing slum apartments with modern, affordable high-rises. By the 1970s Pruitt-Igoe was in such disrepair that it was torn down, the demolition was televised, and a myth was born: public housing was a disaster, an example of government overreaching. The architect Charles Jencks even called the projects demise the death of Modern architecture. Focused and unfussy, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, directed by Chad Freidrichs, is the documentary as essay, and it has a stated purpose: to unpack the myth. The film puts Pruitt-Igoes history in the broader context of American cities after World War II, as they lost jobs and population especially white residents with the growth of the suburbs. And it shows how projects like Pruitt-Igoe were built, then left to struggle in declining cities with shrinking tax bases. At Pruitt-Igoe maintenance was always a problem. Rent was meant to cover upkeep, but couldnt, and rents rose even as living conditions became untenable, and vandalism and crime rampant. This history is too recent to seem dry, and the film gets an added emotional punch from interviews with former tenants, whose memories mix fondness with anger and loss. They talk about community, the thrill of being the first occupants of apartments with views (one woman calls hers a poor mans penthouse) and of living in a place that quickly became a symbol of failure.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/movies/the-pruitt-igoe-myth-by-chad-freidrichs-review.html?_r=0

theyre gonna build condos (anyways)

a storyline in season 2 of the wire introduces the urban working class people that live and work at the shipping port in a fictional baltimore. life here is hard and the work is scarce, some falling into a world of corruption as a means to carry forward and maintain life/prosperity in the ports. in the above image, dockyard leader frank sabotka rhetorically asks his nephew if he knows what is there beyond the fence. franks response: its condos! here, he tries to vocalize the inevitability of the site being developed into condominiums, putting a negative spin on the citys revitalization fixes and further pointing out what would be the eventual demise of the ports and their livelihoods as residents and workers in this particular place.

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torre david was originally intended as an office and commercial complex- not as a barrio. it is a failed project in the heart of the city, abruptly abandoned in an unfinished and practically unusable state owing to the vagaries of historic developments-and now it is being used in a way that was never envisaged. the word high-rise no longer describes the building; it has become something for which we have no adequate term. the limitations and the potential of a high-rise have been explored here in radical ways and at the same time they have been deconstructed- not as an artistic project, but in real life. it is a very special kind of social experiment and an uncertain outcome.

christian schmid, afterword: urbanization as an open process, in urban-think tank, torre david informal vertical communities, 2012

08 an other monumentsocial precedence

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09 an other texas

the following series was exemplary of the difficulties i had formulating a clear and succinct architectural proposition. it was an experiment and challenge trying to reconcile my previous and current findings, aesthetics and processes into an architecture of the city. afterwards and without hesitation, i took the opportunity to step back, even stand still and review my intentions with 300 ohio street. the only thing that was consistent yet still arbitrary, oddly enough, was the formal shape of my proposals that always mirrored the shape of the site itself, an other texas.

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confident that my primary construction material would be concrete, the decision was made to reintroduce the haglin slip forming method. at first i cast a random set of shapes, then i tried to formally imagine how this set would begin to take on an other form; how the fragments would be reconstituted, repurposed, and taken apart as 300 ohio street vertically erected from its foundations. similar to the complications from the making of the model in the misfit series, the question resurfaced of when does this iterative form building process end?

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grasping the scale of 300 ohio street was a extensive task; at times the scale of the project seemed too large, at times it was just right. i began to ease into the difficulty of scale and other difficulties by designing the more controlled and known aspects of the architecture for 300 ohio street. my attention shifted to figuring out how clients/users/inhabitants/the collective might move through the site, allocating spaces for amenities essential to the site, and framing/moving/thickening walls to create certain vantage and even disadvantage points in around and beyond the immediate 300 ohio street site.

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10 an other invention

if becoming/unbecoming an other form is understood as the projection of a spatial and social order, its meaning will become uncertain as soon as we take into account that each physical thing in some way participates in that order. It would thus be appropriate to intervene into the architectural object in a seemingly random way (disrespecting the natural order of architecture- doors, walls, and floors) with the intent to question what is understood as common and to show its contingent character as an other invention.

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an other invention stripped bare the processes and agenda of becoming/unbecoming an other form for buffalos old first ward and silo city. the dominant compositional method was the transformation of the selected types, partial or whole, into entirely new entities that took their communicative authority from the understanding of this transformation. in this act, what we discover is that all inventions, not withstanding subsequent changes, always retain their elementary principle in a way that is clear and manifest to the senses and to reason.

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11 an other unit

my obsession with an other unit as with most obsessions got out of hand. i spent far too long designing then over designing the look and feel of a single residential unit for 300 ohio street. having finally solidified that the two materials for my site would be concrete to reflect the grain elevators of silo city and timber to reflect the vernacular wood frame housing constructions of buffalos old first ward, it simply gave me more incentive to keep at it. i obsessed on those moments when one material would transition to the next, when the material was a floor or a wall or a ceiling or all. i obsessed over what moments would register as permanent or non-permanent, heavy or light, fragmented or whole. by the end, my obsession left me haphazardly stacking the units, adding a third material in drywall, and expanding the range of family units by further collaging old parts to make the new. all in all, my obsession was with generating an other unit only in its perceptual form. ignored i must admit was having an answer to the question of how the client/user/inhabitant/collective would live in 300 ohio street?

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A typical London house is converted for an artist, to create a living space, studio and gallery, accommodation for long term guests, a garden and an apartment to sell or rent.

The concrete is poured in situ against douglas fir shuttering and oscillates between rawness and sensuality, the brutal and the precise. The shuttering marks rescale the building, establishing a dimensional rhythm throughout the new spaces, which informs the scale of furniture and inhabitation.

The relationship of the concrete to the timber linings recalls the process of the shuttering and establishes a conversation about time that begins to expose the larger conversation of the history of the house at one scale and everyday acts of inhabitation, at the other.

drdh architects, private house, 2005

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Am Kupfergraben 10 which is located on the Kupfergraben canal, overlooking the Lustgarten and the Museum Island in Berlin. As part of the cityscape, the composition of the four-storey gallery building reacts to its immediate historic context, while the scale of its window openings reflects the urban dimensions of a corner building.

As an urban infill, the new building connects with both of its neighbouring buildings with regard to their respective building heights and occupies the footprint of the preceding building (destroyed in the war), while at the same time developing its own sculptural quality. The facades are of brick masonry on reconstituted stone courses with no visible expansion joints, using salvaged bricks pointed with slurry. Large window openings reflect the urban scale of the site and define the composition of the facade, given structure by their untreated wooden sashes.

While solid materials that will age well characterise the exterior, the interior is defined by daylight and proportion.

david chipperfield architects, am kupfergraben 10, 2003-2007

becoming/unbecoming an other form

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12 becoming/unbecoming an other form: the 300 ohio street housing project

becoming/unbecoming an other form

the architects approach for the 300 ohio street housing project is to create/enable conditions that allow for the focus of individual authorship while introducing the strengthening benefits of creative and collective input, for construction to be done but not necessarily end. the architects known objective is to bring formality and inventiveness to the process to ensure its success; to play a role in helping people improve their housing so they could willingly modify/construct their spaces without taking away their agency.

the role of social life is thus brought to the fore of the 300 ohio street housing project: we discover how societal models are developed, how forms of cooperation and cohabitation evolve, and how new rules emerge and become established. finally, we learn about the social implications of the architecture of the city and the possibilities of using architecture structures in ways for which they were not originally intended for, that is, the unknown and informal pursuits of the 300 ohio street housing project.

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The nine-storey building comprises three tiers. At the lowest level, a gabled timber chalet sits alongside a row of shop units, which together support a six-storey apartment block in the middle section. Above this, two vernacular houses appear to be sitting on the roof.

The idea was that it was like a little urban village,... It was about assembling disparate elements you would think of as incongruous into a collage that has an expression of community.

The buildings simple block form is eroded and sliced by different housing typologies, courtyards, shared amenities, garden space and circulation routes to create a vertical community, from which its nickname Community In A Cube is derived. The architectural language explicitly expresses the diversity of the buildings community to create a rich visual and spatial experience.

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/02/27/commu-nity-in-a-cube-by-fat/

FAT, community in a cube (CIAC), 2012

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precedence

The territory of finishing becomes a focus, either by letting go earlier or by embedding mechanisms to prompt future work, both of which focus on strategizing the endgame of design and production. Alejando Aravenas response to financial shortfall in social housing in Chile is a striking example: When you have money for half a house, the question is which half do we do? This is distinct from crowd-or open-sourced processes, although it learns much from these principles...In the strategy of the final drafts, the aim is to maintain control over a (relatively) complete piece of work while instigating a next phase, and not to situate design within a fully open or perpetually adjustable system. Final drafts mediate this inherently conflicted boundary; they are not nascent, mutable or tentative, nor are they fixed, permanent or absolute. They are creatively incomplete.

gretchen wilkins and andrew burrow, final draft: designing architectures endgame, in architectural design, 2013

elemental, quinta monroy housing, 2003-2005

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richard prince, untitled (cowboy), 1989

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changes in ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original; the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, 1936

12 becoming/unbecoming an other form:the 300 ohio street housing project

changes in ownership/authorship

an earlier project signified the ideals and possibilities of my authorship and ownership to an object. similar to richard princes art where he took a photograph of a photograph and called it his own, i decided to retrieve and take claim to a set of keys that someone else had found (then posted to a kijiji ad) that had further belonged to someone else (who initially lost their keys). the profound narrative current with this process is the one in which the participants take on the role of letting go, ending ownership and/or claiming authorship.

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site plan, renderings

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sections, perspectival elevationstower 1 (river)

with regards to concrete, its massive and monolithic quality provides a level of permanence (completeness) thatis essential to meeting the intent of the 300 ohio street housing project. what then is concrete? it is column, beam,roof, floor, wall, footing, foundation, even envelope and paving. this versatility of the material allows the architecture to stand on its own, figuratively and literally, as is, to present its barest qualities, that of which speaks to usefulness, prosperity, and commerce (much like the concrete grain elevators of silo citys past). the building is therefore complete once structural, daylighting, mechanical and electrical, as well as egress systems are accounted for, then, the architecture is ready for its unbecoming.

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typical floor planstower 1 (river)

an open wall (knock out wall) system will be developed utilizing cast in place concrete construction, specifically, to facilitate (and inventively) later adaptations to the 300 ohio street housing project.

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mechanical electrical plumbingtower 1 (river)

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through use and time

with regards to timber, it is the ideal material of choice to contrast the permanence of cast in place concrete (an incompleteness), to bring material warmth and lightness to the 300 ohio street housing project. more so, timber frame construction is a vital component for the purposes of customization due to timbers easy workability where adaptation and informality will prevail. as it stands, timber frame construction exists once flexibility and inventiveness (work to be complete) is demanded and/or desired. this is the pivotal point in the process that begins to shape and shift, give real meaning, to the 300 ohio street housing project and the architecture of the city.

initial form

1 year into completion 10 years into completion


the unknown and informal

becoming unbecoming an other form

Documents

ward neighbourhood

buffalos silo city

ward residents03

ward residentsas

glor01 becomingunbecoming

agenda of becomingunbecoming

studyingdocumenting

architecture thesisadvisor