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SYNECDOCHE

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Female owned

Ann Arbor | Detroit, MI

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Soft Space

2010 - competition - top 10

As a framework for exploration in the human scale and constructed mediation of space, this proposes a soft space of emergent exploration determined by the public itself. The space is then defined by a concrete conceptual foundation of form and material, yet embodies a virtual and indeterminate process of time, intervention and response. This project is then interested in how a designed framework can enable the public to participate and digest the creation of a volume. It questions the authorship of architecture by authoring possibilities rather than conclusions. Life is then registered with a temporal sequence of manipulations. A pattern of panels are affixed to the egg-crate construction creating the void and framework for manipulated space. The ever accessible bungee cord is then the agent of interaction. While the space itself can be assemble quickly and efficiently with standard construction techniques and modular pieces, the final product is never revealed. A finished product cannot exist in a work of architecture that proposes time as a design material. Deploying factors of unpredictability as a material agenda is a work of architecture that requires exploration in full scale. While models and drawings are mediators in the process of design, they can not anticipate effects outside of themselves. The initiating form works then is a way to allow multiple arrangements and explorations of the effects of the linear cord. As the frame peels away from itself, participants slip into a void defined by their adjacency’s, interactions and perceptions. Cords can be moved, stretched and applied to various scenarios of defining void, registering the interest and interaction of visitors through the plasticity of the space. A pattern of perforations and notches allow for the attachment of cords. The gradient pattern enables a rigorous and condensed weaving of cords in the core of the space which fades to a looser array of connection points at the slipping points. The anticipatory nature of the architecture project looks forward towards new means of material and threshold. It reaches beyond itself as a defined work with indeterminate possibilities. The human now makes an event out of architecture rather than being imposed by it.

 
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Status: Competition Entry
Location: Atlanta, GA, US