Vulnerable Icon

I have been working on a set of urban transects this weekend, attempting to bring the collages I had developed over Wintersession into the realm of scale. (I have yet to post these images, but hope to have them up before this week ends…) Since I produced these collaged sections (which was quite a while ago) I have been asking myself where do I take them next? This medium has definitely spoken to me, I have enjoyed working with it so much, in part because it is a way for me to introduce iconic images onto a drawing, and in a way, communicate the heavy context this space has with my past. 

One of the troubles I have had with depicting this district, is that my visual relationship with Miramar is based so much more on my family’s history with it. It’s not about the new school building, nor the bar where we go to get a drink, but about the stories of my father taking his new car out when he was sixteen, about the dog shit on the sidewalk, of my two aunts sneaking out in miniskirts. I feel as if my life memories have been defined so much more by other people’s than mine, and in a way the spaces I am inhabiting are the results of stories and grainy photographs from an era that I will never belong to. 

This is something I have understood for a while, and come to terms with, because I believe there is a genuine beauty in the fact that they cannot completely share these experiences with me, just as much as I will never be able to completely share my life with my children. Instead, the links I can understand out of these stories, these romantic memories, is a world in which the quietest moments become the strongest marks. The church will always be bathed in the same light, the trees will always move with the same wind, the cracks in the sidewalk become wider, but rarely disappear. 

I have been trying to understand how I can use these memories, these shared connections into a catalogue of characteristics of this space, how I can begin to categorize the lushness, this perfume that seems to be mixed with the sweat of every generation past and pour it into a new space.

These are the questions I have been asking myself as I have been working o m drawings. Every time I am looking at Trastalleres, there is this one figure that always catches my attention although I have tried to take it out of my mind. It is a dry-dock that I do not believe is used anymore, either way, I’m sure there are no plans to use it and possibly eliminate it. But as I was observing it I kept on thinking about Olga’s suggestion on making the space a transformable one, a space that, instead of being subdivided into categories, one space that can take on different meanings at different times. I felt as if the dry-dock was an interesting comparison, the way it accepts a vessel and closed its gates, drains the water and becomes an empty bathtub of activity. The different states it takes on, wet, dry, empty, full, I believe there is a strong energy in the space, especially because of the irony of its relative versatility compared to its monstrous size.

I’m a bit nervous abut the amount f time I have, but I would like to do an animation for the March 10th review. I want to do a short story that articulates how this space can become a vessel for any inserted activity and context. It’s a bit funny because  I feel as if the convention center, located just a few thousand feet away could have been that (and technically is so.) But perhaps this is what I have been thinking of, a type of urban convention center, a reprogrammable space that is subject to whatever fills it. It’s a genuine shame that the new Center can never come close to that, every time I look at that building I feel a genuine frustration because it reflects our issue of identity so harshly… Not only do we have to isolate (what should be such a dynamic building) from any contact with the urban population, but also, what has bee put there is a box with a thin wave of glass symbolizing its Caribbean location, the graphics are what define it surroundings; what is inside is never given the opportunity to define it’s exterior image.

There is an incredible power to Latin American Architecture, particularly around the time of the fifties and sixties, in which apart from the ultimate form, the materials, even the program, the objects created were ultimately public spaces. They were skeletons, concrete carcasses that had had outside textures, nooks and holes that could not be controlled nor programmed. These monster buildings could be tackled by a street vendor looking for a place to park for the day, or a vagabond in search for some shade, they were iconic, yet vulnerable.

 

Collecting thoughts

I’ve spent the past few days trying to find a way to accumulate my interests and findings on this project into a simple explanation.

During last semester’s seminar, I was interested in the different manifestations one building can have based on the person addressing it. The person’s perception of the building depends on their level of interaction with it, and this very same thing happened to me not long ago.

Close to my home there is a small strip of restaurants, a supermarket, pharmacy, etc. I was accompanying my mother to buy some groceries when I looked up and realized that this strip of little shops and restaurants was actually the base of a fifteen story apartment complex that I had never registered in my mind. Of course, I had seen the apartments, I drive past them almost every day  and they are difficult to avoid (since they are a relatively high tower), but I had mentally (and visually) removed them from existence.

It’s such a strange sensation to realize that you have been experiencing (and have only been aware of) a very small part of a much larger object, and I think that this interest has led me to start investigating large, multiple program buildings such as the Golden Mile Complex and People’s Park Complex in which, for the size of the building, the people around it rarely grasp the enormity of the object and the fact that it is as much a city as any other horizontal set of buildings is.

In the following week I have a set of projects I hope to accomplish. First, I will do a quick chart identifying the different buildings and topics that I am researching, where they connect and where they stand alone in this project. This chart will probably (and hopefully) change as my project progresses. I am also going to set ahead doing a project that attempts to demonstrate the varying perspectives a person (or various people) can have on one building when approaching it.

Currently reading: Fumihiko Maki  Investigations in Collective Form

Two men eating ice cream bars in front of the supermarket, they are always there. The woman sitting down at the table is selling lotto tickets, and just a few establishments down is a restaurant called El Tropical which I have gone since a child with my grandparents. Just above this strip are the residences that I had never noticed.

 

National Disgrace

This afternoon, while perusing Koolhaas’  S M L XL I stumbled upon a beautiful image of a place called the Golden Mile Complex in Singapore (pictured above.) Unfortunately, I scanned the image but did not save it correctly, so I will go back tomorrow, retrieve it and post it ASAP.

Built in 1973, this building is composed of a 16 story mash-up of programs, including a 1,896 seat cinema, 529 parking spaces, two hundred shops, clubs, a sixteen story office tower and topped with a stepped cascade of sixty eight low income apartments that look out onto the Kallang Basin. As can be predicted about such a high capacity building and environment, the residents and everyday inhabitants of the complex have slowly taken over and adapted the spaces within, altering and manipulating the spaces as its community evolves. In a quote by member of parliament Ivan Png (stolen from Wikipedia) he describes the resident’s effect on the building stating:

Each individual owner acts selfishly, adding extensions, zinc sheets, patched floors, glass, all without any regard for other owners and any regard for national welfare.

In 2006, Png declared the building to be a “national disgrace”. The residents have also done over their balconies to create an extra room, and as you can see below, the tiered facade has taken on a haphazard state that blurs the definition between the individually designed units and the  neighborhood they have become.

This complex seems to have stemmed from the Japanese Metabolist Architecture Movement of the 60′s. Started in Tokyo, this group seemed to produce designs that were fueled by a belief in “demand and circumstance” in which the aesthetics of the orderly town square were rejected and replaced by a type of ad-hoc, organic architecture. It was an architecture built and left to grow organically throughout time with its residents, its bones never changing, but its overall fabric becoming subject to the wills of the public.

The Metabolist Architecture Movement seems to have been a natural step for a culture that found themselves introducing modernism and industrialization to a massive sized population. It was not a question of designing for the individual, but instead of designing an object that could not exist without the masses.

I find it interesting that I related so much to this type of architecture. I visited Singapore a few years back with my parents, and we observed how similar it was to Puerto Rico in its  climate, culture and architecture.  Singapore’s population is close to 5M, while ours is just under 4M, and while we are still a colony/common wealth of the United States, they transitioned from British colony to independent nation in 1963. I am consistently drawn to projects that resemble the size and social interests that these buildings represent and how they manifested themselves into that style in those times. I hope to find a level of expression that is both characteristic of the time we are at and the conditions we find ourselves in and aspire to get to as a small Caribbean population.

Bellow I will include a few more images of the Golden Mile, for me they seem to stand in the fine line between the nature of chaos and the order of design, and I believe that this type of architecture changes based on the level of “resolution” you see it at. From up close, all one can pay attention to is the air conditioners, alterations, changes in materials and obvious presence of its residents, but from affar you realize the grander gesture and thouht of the building, the separation of programmes and environments in section and facade. This building and these images make me wonder who has control in this situation, is the building dictating how the people in and around it interact, or are the inhabitants slowly taking over? Is it both conditions? When did one stop dominating and the other take over? Etc.

Below is the S M L XL image of the Golden Mile Complex…

 

From the Beginning

Well, I have to admit that I am very excited about starting this blog, but I have spent the past few days asking myself, where do I start? I believe the most logical step is to show you the first image that spoke to me and that has remained the most constant as I have been developing my thoughts on thesis and on my personal interests as an architecture student.

I cannot remember how I stumbled upon Lina Bo Bardi’s work, but this building struck me and this image said so much about the potential for one building (housing a private institution) to affect and mold public space in so many scales. The Museum of Sao Paulo is actually quite simple in its construction and overall appearance; it’s a two story box supported by its red concrete hangers; there is a free space underneath that spans 74 meters and leads to a garden called Belvedere Trianon that looks out onto Paulista Avenue. The garden sits atop the rest of the museum, a set of theaters and underground galleries that also serve as a cineplex and can be accessed without entering the fine art galleries. Essentially, the suspended galleries and underground theaters could be considered separate objects, and most importantly, their separation offers a clear space for the public to interact during their daily activities as well as recognizing, connecting and affecting with the larger scope of the city.

What attracts me to this building and its site is the idea that it can have a different meaning for every person that encounters it, for some its a place to shield themselves under the sun while waiting fot the bus, for others, its their local movie theater. In my eyes, this structure transcends its original program (that of a fine art museum) and becomes an urban monument, one that (when first built) demarcated and strengthened the urban fabric, and now seems to have become a more maleable object, one that changes its image and purpose with its inhabitants.

In a way, the building is not defined by what it contains, but instead by what surrounds it.