Cultivating Meaning and Space

I almost forgot about research methods research pseudo-paper which actually came due before the structures class.  The topic I chose/ended up with suited me well.  At first it started out as a discovery mission to find out how landscape architecture is addressing more than just the visual.  In the end, I used a series of articles published in Landscape Journal about gardens and meaning to look at 4 different types of work, how these all potentially create meaning through a variety of purpose and medium.

The research itself was good for me as it reminded me to look at works as more than just pretty pictures, that there are levels of success and that there are many different approaches to landscape architecture.  I think I actually came to some sort of epiphany when I forced myself to define “landscape,” realizing that landscape architecture is more about people than nature; it is about the relationship between people and space and to each other.  One of my favorite quotes from the research was this from Lucy Lippard:

“each time we enter a new place, we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity…  By entering that hybrid, we change it; and in each situation we may play a different role.”

One of my main purposes in this was to really think about how landscape design can be more than just icing, how we can create spaces that become a sort of poetry.  From the intro pages…

“In the Anthropology of Senses and Sensations, Jack Goody says that the five basic senses are our window on the world.  Through senses we acquire information and our experience of the world is mediated by the senses.  As we know from physics, the world from which we obtain sensory information is very different from the world as we experience it.  The “picture” our brain creates is limited by the range of stimuli to which our senses are attuned.  Unlike language, landscapes can be designed to appeal to all five senses.  A user must interpret these sensations and depending on the stimuli we are attuned, the meaning or significance varies.” 

 

The four works I looked at were Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Nadim Karam’s Urban Toys, Latz and Partner’s Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, and Kathryn Gustafson and Leni Schwendinger’s Dreaming in Color at McCaw Hall.

“The four works have little in common, but they all utilize sensory input to convey meaning between users and designers.  Each can be read at multiple levels, ranging from very simple to the more complex which is fed by interrelated action of the senses and previous experience.  These works offer opportunities to negotiate and renegotiate human relationships and communicate these relationships.”

 

 

And yet again another project that only gets about half way finished.  I guess that was the purpose of this class though… to set up the potential for something to do later.  Procrastinator’s unite! …tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for Precedents, Projects, the Experiential…

I have about a million projects going on at once and, at points, they all seem to combine.  So, if this seems a bit random… well, you know.  Studio is about projections, sound, light…  the research pseudo-paper is about the experiential in spacemaking…  of course, still looking for innovative thoughts regarding the swamp project… and HYBRIDS, hybrids, hybrids…  what the hell am I doing there?  Something with distortion of images / time / space / perspective… 

Anyway, in searching out projects to refer to in the research paper I found these through the Public Arts Review publication.  It occurs to me that landscape architecture may be going through an awkward phase.  Or, actually, has been going through an awkward phase.  The age-old question of who am I?  Are we gardeners?  Are we artists?  Are we urban planners?  Do we build structure or design around structure?  What is the role of “landscape” in landscape architecture?  What is a landscape?  Does the word carry within it some sort of problematic notion about nature and plants?

It also occurs to me that perhaps the landscape architecture program challenges the notion that getting a masters degree is more focused…  it feels more like a nexus, rather than a focus.  A place where so many fields can combine and then radiate back out.  It has room for all those questions and more answers than I care to think about.

Perhaps it should just be “spacemaking”.  But who would want a degree in that?

Edwin Redl – Matrix  http://www.paramedia.net/

Athena Tacha and awesome team – Sunbursts http://www.oberlin.edu/art/athena/tacha2.html#sunbursts (Oberlin, of course)

Max Neuhaus – Sound in Public Spaces  http://www.max-neuhaus.info/ie.htm

Dan Senn – Catacombs of Yucatan  http://www.newsense-intermedium.com/

Paul De Marinis – Firebirds http://www.thickeye.com/blog/archives/000196.html (uh, awesome)

Suzanne Lacy – http://www.suzannelacy.com/

Leni Schwendinger – Dreaming in Color http://www.lightprojectsltd.com/

Digging up the past

Blog space = a way to go back and remember while acting as if you’re surfing the internet.

From last semester (did we have any reading in this studio??)

…the Easterling reading “powerful sites are improvisational and responsive to the circumstantial changes of anarchical organizations”. 

There is something about layering in here.  Something about how the layering of the interstitial creates both the origin and the result at the same time and relates them to each other.  This relationship creates something new, a kind of base for other forms to creep out of.

Just wanted to keep those in mind.

Form is often deformed when construction is deconstructed

I know that I always enjoy a little subversion.

On Eisenman

“…the possible subversion of our preconceived notions of what constitutes real space and time in architecture and suggests that other processes are present but suppressed by what is considered normal.”

In understanding that Eisenman is interested in process, I believe he is trying to get people to talk about the processes that create form (architecture) and abandon overused expressions that somehow ignore or gloss over them.  Not that he wants to throw out all the new, but rather wants to introduce new ways of how we look at these spaces.

“…when tropes act to displace continuity, they can open a discourse to new conditions of being.”

“…it is understood as a non-visual sensation that also requires the experience of the subject in space.  This affective experience begins to question the hegemony of visual representation…”

Perhaps because my site interpretation thus far has been dealing with sound, I relate this article to a discussion of experiential exploration – meaning that our experiences with a particular place are developed not only through how we see it, but also through our other senses which may or may not be linear or have a discernible form.  Also a space goes through many incarnations – it is not just one thing all the time.  These differences between incarnations are the interstitial that he is talking about - I think.

There is something about layering in here.  Something about how the layering of the interstitial creates both the origin and the result at the same time and relates them to each other.  This relationship creates something new, a kind of base for other forms to creep out of.

A couple of phrases I found and liked from deconstructivism… “stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos” and “antagonistic space planning”.  These both make me think of the aforementioned “matrix” that comes out of layering the interstitial.  Soooo… zones of undecidability = matrix?  It sounds flashy.  I wish he would stop using the words trope, rhetoric and metaphor over and over again.  I especially wish he would decide (hah) if the tropes are subversive or if they have been subverted. 

On Smithson-

I particularly found this article amusing.  I think I want to go on a non-trip to a site from a Non-site.  Um, I think he is talking about mapping the interstitial, or mapping the layers that create the interstitial.  Whatever, I’m just going to use “interstitial” as much as possible.  I love his last paragraph - it’s so “whatever”. 

Organizational Space

I have to admit that many times in this article I found myself getting lost in the wording, for better or for worse.  It seems that fluidity and anticipating (or accommodating) change are the main points.  Some of the parts that I lingered on… 

“…the logistical format or protocol of that process is the chief determinant of spatial and material consequences…”

“Generic spatial production… amplifies small adjustments by way of its own banality.”

“…whatever remains eccentric to a culture’s boundaries and brackets is more likely to cross-reference its intelligence.”

and

“wild cards… are smart.”

 Again we have this idea of flux and experience, progression and change.  Last night at the theater, the dialogue was about chaos theory and determinism, whether we can predict how things are going to end up.  And resoundingly the answer seems to be “no”.  At least for this semester…  Where was I going with this?  Who knows…  Guess we’ll just have to find out later.