Archinect
Olisa Agulue

Olisa Agulue

Atlanta, GA, US

anchor

Object Language Apparatus

The underlying grid of Milledgeville is made counterfeit through the acquisition of a non-contextual grid derived from the adjacent city of Savannah Georgia and used for the sake of aesthetic. This acquisition is base and contradicts the richness of the architectural landscape contained innately within the Milledgeville area. However, contextual data can be sourced from the random interaction of  society with its faux grid. Two roads which bisect the body of Milledgeville are interpreted as splines from which the urban mass clusters, the major road of W.Hancock Street the parallel road of W. Greene street. The cluster, a combination of commercial and public spaces extends from the spline in cloudy random moments, generating a dynamic grid emergent of social relationships rather than copied aesthetic. The site,the CCP(Central City Park) creates a terminus which concludes the extended line W.Greene. and generates a focal point down its axis.

    In order to return Milledgeville to an architecture language resultant of critical and theoretical thought  , a conceptual idea derived from Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of Foucault's ‘Theory of the Apparatus’ is used as design tool to focus the succeeding experiments into the context of an apparatus . Using Fluid dynamic simulation multiple masses or cluster forms were generated through the collision of individual segments of nebulous matter. The emitted clusters were constrained by the topographical formations impacting its generated path and frozen when a desired tension between mass and landscape was achieved. The continuous alteration of the density of emitting particles along the topographic variations of the site allowed an infinite amount of masses to be generated, therefore creating an infinite amount possible spatial relationships. A pathway produced from the contours of the landscape is constructed within the the site, and raised above the ground plain  to allow pedestrians to experience the site sectionally and compare it to adjacent buildings structures outside the site.

    The apparatus creates the subject by by which it is given reason through the network of systems that comprise it, and determines the perception of all things within it self generated context .  The project questions the lens through which we become aware of our environment and to what extent do we allow this environment to control us. The OLA(Object language Apparatus) creates an environment through which the previous landscape is criticized and through which others can critique it. Like the Wexner Centre by Eisenman, the OLA utilizes the underlying pre-existing contextual landscape to instigate a discussion on the the faux relationship between grid and its topography. It establishes a relationship between building as generated from the landscape but distinct and irreducibly to generic definitions of context through the cluster of geometries derived from the curvature of the initial site( the cluster is a product of the curve but too primitive to be reduced to it)

The intent is not to negatively critique Milledgeville as devoid of architectural intention, but to draw attention to the richness of elements outside the normal right angle relationships.


 

 
Read more

Status: School Project
Location: Milledgeville, GA, US