SHAELENA MORLEY

Thick and Thin

By Shaelena on February 19, 2012 10:47 PM | Permalink

Just a quick sketch - getting back to the idea of collecting people and their stuff while also thinking of the materiality of the project. The thought is that the different materials would cross through different units creating overlap of spaces as well as material.

More to follow soon...

Massing + relationships

By Shaelena on February 16, 2012 7:55 PM | Permalink

In Tuesday's pin up I determined that I need to move away from the tetris/box L shape, but lately I feel like I'm just staring into the rhino abyss so these are purely to create relationships between different units, not to express material or surface. In reality, I think the surfaces will interlock across multiple units rather than merely representing one person's flat or another (here: red or yellow). Will be working on that as well.

Have also been looking at the Double House (or Villa KBWW) by MVRDV for its relationships between units:

Project Statement

By Shaelena on February 9, 2012 7:38 PM | Permalink

[Some parts I really like, some parts I still really hate, but here it is]

"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you...We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

Don Cheadle, Crash (2004)

Life in the urban metropolis is a dichotomy of terms. On one hand, in the very nature of dense living, we accept with a certain reluctance, the interweaving of our own lives with others, a kind of involuntary collection of people, possessions, and stories. In tandem with the abrupt collision of people's lives is a rigid and ultimately isolating framework of the city. With visions of utopia, Modernism brought the grid, the unit, a machine for living which in the end results in a collection of islands, separating corridors, and boundaries.

Patrick Mauries, author and expert on Cabinets of Curiosities, speaks of the importance of not only the objects within a collection, but "with the notion of correspondence...bewteen the microcosm and the macrocosm." Like the collection of people in a city, the objects placed together add layer upon layer in a vast network of meaning.

With a framework hinging on division, separation, and isolation, the city could use a renewed correspondence bewteen the inhabitants it collects. This project will focus on the most personal, intimate, and accessible aspect of city living: the urban housing block, a microcosm of the city itself. The aim is to create a Cabinet of Curious Living, to challenge the conventional typology of the Modernist housing block, a rigid collection of cells and separators, while simultaneously coming to terms with the tendencies of western society to clearly define living space as one's own. Neither a peace and love commune nor a rigid mass with an unending corridor, the project will subtly navigate somewhere in between. By challenging, sometimes forcefully, the notion of shared space, the residents will have no choice but to collide at moments with the lives of their neighbours. By overlapping, intersecting, and sometimes revealing, the project will more aggressively collect the lives of its inhabitants in all their chaos.

Revised Storyboard

By Shaelena on February 9, 2012 6:20 PM | Permalink

Finally with a clear direction, I've updated my storyboard (click for larger view) - Blue dots next to the spread indicates what I plan to have for the interim, red dots are spreads that are mostly completed. Still a long haul...

Tetris Anyone?

By Shaelena on February 6, 2012 12:52 AM | Permalink

A few tests for organising/arranging different units in a way that overlaps and implies other spaces both in plan and in section. Also, the circulation through the spaces should always cross through other more public spaces or even moments in the L-shaped units themselves, redefining how boundaries are eliminated or redefined between residents.

Seeing as how this is looking very tetris-like, this kind of view wouldn't be the visual language of the project. It's more for me to work out types of relationships between units. Also, this is still rather chaotic, but I'll take these particular fragments and develop real sections out of them highlighting the overlap at different scales.

Developing a Formal Language

By Shaelena on February 2, 2012 11:53 PM | Permalink

In full TS mode now (like the other 5th years) and trying to more clearly define the real vs. implied boundary as well as determining the moments of connection and separation in the project.

I've been looking at a basic sort of building/spatial element to define a formal language which I can very clearly and systematically manipulate to achieve the effects I want.

Seeing as how Unite has already been an important part of my project, it seems logical to try to get a bit more mileage out of it. SO, the typical unit section is two nested L shapes with a corridor, which looks like this:

and by removing the corridor, I want to essentially do this:

I'm now taking the L profile to develop this formal language at different scales to achieve different things.

In plan, the nested L shape provides a compact private zone for bedrooms, but separated begins to imply another space, which is more public, and eventually the implied boundary is lost as the space gets bigger and more public.

As a column or portion of a wall, I can manipulate the material and position of the profile to create a variety of conditions: the left one of transparency, the middle of opacity, and the right a condition which would allow light, without easily allowing views.

By manipulating geometry and position, the same column becomes more like a wall, where the thick part obscures views at eye level, while still allowing light to come through the bottom portion of the wall.

TS/Project Storyboard

By Shaelena on January 31, 2012 2:26 AM | Permalink

This feels more project heavy than TS heavy at the moment, but I'll continue to add in TS spreads as I go (will update with scanned version of storyboard tomorrow as this is almost completely illegible).

Back to collage

By Shaelena on January 28, 2012 2:36 PM | Permalink

A crude first attempt, but an attempt nonetheless to create a kind of photomontage of historical precedents as well as my insertion in the superblock conversation. This also begins to address the transition from exterior to interior (another comment from the jury).

A view of a visual superblock hybrid - combining Corviale, Unite d'Habitation, and my insertion:

Jury + Notes

By Shaelena on January 28, 2012 2:06 PM | Permalink

A snippet from my jury presentation:

"My aim is to create a living cabinet of curiosities for the city to: challenge the conventional superblock housing typology by removing the corridor and more importantly challenge how we inhabit it; encourage and sometimes force the involuntary collection of other people's lives which we reluctantly accept when living in the city; and overall, recreate the correspondence between the residents, the pieces of the city's collection."

Floor plan, 1st attempt: Two living spaces, volumetrically shared while still creating a boundary in terms of access with the location of the kitchen island.

Section, first attempt: By removing the corridor, the organisational structure of the flats instead revolves around an open internal courtyard. Additionally, the living spaces cross and overlap surrounding the open volume creating the renewed correspondence. With a nod to Atelier Bow-Wow, the drawing starts to indicate how these changes alter the way in which we inhabit an urban block - layering the spatial, technical, and social stories woven in a single drawing.

Thanks to jurors Chris Pierce, Chris Matthews, and Tom Weaver the conversation was animated to say the least. Of the many comments and suggestions, these were the ones that stuck with me the most:

The Modernist block serves as typology and precedent. Make nods to it throughout the project rather than rush to the interior

You didn't mention the grid in your drawings, which is the thing that allows the typology. Repetition of the grid allows the multifarious happenings within. How do you interrupt that grid through plan or volumetric ideas rather than surface textures?

Design the architecture rather than the narratives within

You can talk through your superblock by talking about others - in a way a version by which one would describe Merzbau by talking about the bits within. (include photomontage history)

Conversation of

Orthogonal vs. Non-orthogonal

Grid vs. Anti-grid

Superblock vs. Collage

Generic vs. Context

Updated TS Table of Contents

By Shaelena on January 26, 2012 6:49 PM | Permalink

Urban Living and the Architectural Overlap

Table of Contents:

0_Project Statement: A Cabinet of Curious Living

1_Grid and Anti-Grid: Challenging the Conventional Superblock

Chapter 1.1_Grid and Corridor

1.11_The Ubiquity of the Grid - A concise history (?)

1.12_Introduction of the Corridor - A nod to Robin Evans

Chapter 1.2_Superblock | High Density Urban Housing

1.21_The Model. Unite d'Habitation - Marseille, 1957.

1.22_The 'S'. Park Hill - Sheffield, 1961.

1.23_The Strip. il Corviale - Rome, 1982.

1.24_The Snake. Kitagata Apartments - Gifu, 2000.

Chapter 1.3_Anti Grid | Aggregation and Collage

1.31_Merzbau - Hannover, 1919
1.32_Superdensity. Kowloon Walled City - Hong Kong, 1868-1993.
1.33_Precedent

2_Architectural Overlap in its Three Forms: Research and Experimentation

Chapter 2.1_Spatial Overlap

2.11_Functional

2.12_Implied Boundaries

2.13_Access

Chapter 2.2_Visual Overlap

2.21_Perspectival

2.22_Material Solutions

2.23_Obstructions

Chapter 2.3_Acoustic Overlap

2.31_Isolation/Absorption

2.32_Diffusion

2.33_Reflection

3_Correspondence in the Curious Cabinet: Implementation of Architectural Overlap

Chapter 3.1_Moment 1

3.11_Macrocosm | The Big Picture

3.12_Microcosm | The Detail

3.13_Result | View and/or Model

Chapter 3.2_Moment 2

3.21_Macrocosm | The Big Picture

3.22_Microcosm | The Detail

3.23_Result | View and/or Model

Chapter 3.3_Moment 3

3.31_Macrocosm | The Big Picture

3.32_Microcosm | The Detail

3.33_Result | View and/or Model

Inhabitation Plates (WIP)

By Shaelena on January 23, 2012 11:18 AM | Permalink

Just a small piece of one of the plates for the jury- still lots more to draw and of course needs annotation as well. Also, ignore the fully clothed man standing in the shower - just needed scale.

Superblock Precedents

By Shaelena on January 19, 2012 7:47 PM | Permalink

Slowly, but surely, I'm (hopefully) homing in on the real crux of the project. Whereas before I was thinking of my project as one of collection explored through housing, after my last tutorial I'm thinking it should be the other way around. How can I use the idea of collection (of people- their stuff, their stories, their lives) to challenge how we approach design and inhabitation of urban housing?

"The history of cabinets of curiosities began with the notion of a correspondence...between the microcosm and the macrocosm." -Patrick Mauries, Cabinets of Curiosities

With the above quote in mind, going back to the Merzbau we can view it as a cabinet of curiosities all on its own though not precisely in a cabinet. A deeply personal collection, the Merzbau shows an aggregation of disorder - dense, chaotic, and always changing.

If we then think of the hyper dense examples of urban housing (the Superblock, for instance), we have a space of aggregation, but also one of division with the cellular separation of different flats. This separation hinders the correspondence which is vital to the cabinet of curiosities.

Living in the city, one must accept a certain level of "involuntary collection" of bits of people's lives due to living in such dense quarters. By and large, the conventional attempts of "shared space" are limited by the divided typology. My strategy will be to intervene - to challenge the notion of shared/communal space in the superblock and push the correspondence between the pieces of this collection (here, the residents) to create a cabinet of curiosities for the city. To start, I will begin by removing the corridor of the typical double loaded and/or courtyard building in favour of the progression of connected spaces Robin Evans describes before the invention of the corridor.

"If anything is described by an architectural plan, it is the nature of human relationships..."

-Robin Evans, Figures, Doors, and Passages

First, I will begin with an existing housing project and surgically remove the corridor to see how this can alter the nature of human relationships within it. I've collected a few precedents to choose from; here's a selection:

Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong (now demolished): arguably the "Merzbau" of Housing in its chaotic, uncontrolled growth

Corviale in Rome: another example of urban housing taken over by the residents

typical upper floor plan:

Grid vs. Courtyard

By Shaelena on January 16, 2012 6:29 PM | Permalink

Still working on articulating what this means for my project, but in looking at collection and urban housing, two main architectural types came to mind - the courtyard (or perhaps more generally, the boundary) and the grid.

The courtyard aggregates and contains. This typology can be applied at different scales - from the table in a dining room, the patio of a flat, the courtyard of a building, the park in a city.

The grid separates and allows expansion in repetition of the cell. It can be seen in the modulation of a bookshelf, the section of a dense housing block, the grid of a city

I took two examples at the urban scale which deal with the tension of the grid and courtyard:

First Barcelona, combining the grid at the city scale, courtyard at the building scale:

then Manhattan, the grid forming the streets with Central Park as a courtyard for the city

Finally, I'm working on drawing my own scenario which jumps to various scales within one drawing:

At the scale of the room - Barcelona's grid is embedded in the dining room table, which sits on its carpet on the gridded floor:

At the scale of the building, a double loaded corridor wraps around the building's courtyard filled with a gridded hard and softscape:

At the scale of the city, the urban block is repeated in its grid of the city streets:

This drawing(s) still needs some work, the jump from scale to scale isn't always successful yet. Also, I'd like to try another set which focuses on the elevation/sectional view and emphasises the grid.

Whitebook- WIP

By Shaelena on January 12, 2012 8:43 PM | Permalink

I swear progress has been made! Still working on the most recent stuff...

Connection types - small scale (TS + WIP)

By Shaelena on December 12, 2011 11:49 AM | Permalink

Preparing for the TS tutorial, I've started cataloguing different connection types in their simplest form, starting with the small scale. Hopefully from here, I can start to show how these connections are used at different scales through examples and later testing.

Still very much WIP:

Scales of Collection

By Shaelena on December 8, 2011 1:20 AM | Permalink

Had a great tute on Tuesday, where we talked about collecting of spaces, but also at different scales. Will revisit the recording for some more articulate notes about the conversation.

For now, I've started sketching out possible plates ideas so that the project is continually zooming in and out at different scales therefore looking at different collections (of objects, people, spaces).

Right now, the room image is looking similar to Elena's, but that'll change - this was just to quickly communicate an idea, focusing on one particular scale.

Also, not sure what the street view looking up would really say yet...

Crazy California Lady (aka Sarah Winchester)

By Shaelena on December 4, 2011 5:54 PM | Permalink

Part of the discussion during the review was about focusing not on the objects of a collection, but on the spaces, perhaps even collecting spaces themselves...

...which prompted Jill the Genius to think of "Crazy California Lady" who, in a way, collected spaces.

Watch the first 2 minutes or so of the Winchester Mystery House:

Types of Collection (still wip)

By Shaelena on December 4, 2011 5:09 PM | Permalink

From the review, this section begins to bring together the means of collecting into one drawing - a visual explanation from the following excerpt of my previous statement:

"As important as the objects themselves, the process of collection as well as the spaces which contain it define our curated context. From the carefully ordered and encased to the quietly concealed, to the chaotic and over-saturated, the means of collecting alters our understanding or personal context and its relationship with the outside world."

Redefining the room (WIP)

By Shaelena on December 1, 2011 3:11 AM | Permalink

Slowly finding my way to an actual argument/position, but not quite there yet. Also, terminology a bit convoluted. Need more/better words for collector, collection, etc.

As important as the objects themselves, the process of collection as well as the space of collection define our curated contexts. From the carefully ordered and encased (nostalgic), to the quietly concealed (recluse?), to the chaotic over-saturated (hoarder), the means of collecting can continually alter our understanding of personal context and its relationship with the outside world. The room, then, is the container for the collection of collections - transforming itself for each collector. The room highlights what is embedded, concealed and revealed, a process which renews and adds meaning for the object, the collection, and its container. It expands and contracts to not only accommodate the objects themselves, but to view each collection in isolation and as part of a collective (ie: itself an object through which the collector lives).

And just for kicks: The room is the collective of collectors and their collections! (Ha.)

Embedding

By Shaelena on November 28, 2011 4:59 PM | Permalink

Just trying to think of different ways of "embedding" in relation to objects, spaces, the collective...

Also working on some wall sections paired with photoshop views to test some options for what the collection is, what gets embedded, how it gets embedded, the depth of these insertions, etc. Different scales within one wall could be interesting as well (is my room the embedded wall? Don't want to overstep into Winnie's territory though)

Embedded surface (though perhaps not technically embedding here):