Cultural Infrastructure

*Product of a definition of a historical moment*

bowls of lettuce
*well timed*

Interior Rendering

Final Text

Jessica Morris

Final Presentation Text

701 – The City as Aggregated Figure: Philadelphia

Prof. Peter Trummer – Fall 2013

The origin of our studio’s formal investigation was the Willis Tower. Formerly known as the Sears Tower, the tower was initially conceptualized as a structural system of bundled tubes. Within the context of the tower, we have moved to implicate REM’s 20^th century reading of individual tower floors, or virgin sites, bearing grounds that are maintained via perpetual discontinuity. While our site and consequential project is not within the lineage of the tower, we are accepting the historical premise of ground construction and are willingly appropriating these parts to whole ideals by projecting them onto a sectional interrogation.

The tower establishes a ground whereby aggregation is the politic, the epistemology. By delving into the set raised by these vocabularies of architectural intervention, peering inside and exposing the constituents, I ask, “Is it only that architecture, i.e. building, aggregates, or does not politic also too aggregate? If politic does indeed aggregate, its productive and consequent structure is a new urban form, capable perhaps of a new architecture. This activation of ground can maintain or perhaps reconstitute a position of autonomy. And while certainly not productive of a disciplinary autonomy, as the result is a product of an aggregate politic, but rather of advancement in the autonomy of architectural production. Within the urban field, does architecture not continue to qualify as autonomous if it is responsible for product, other than simulacra or replication? 

To accept that there is effectively no ground, until architecture produces it as such sets the stage to continue an investigation of a regime of aggregate autonomy, as differentiated from architectural or disciplinary autonomy. The question remains as to what figure has emerged within the project. I have called the thing a DIA-CON, i.e. a diagrammatic icon, representative of architectural politic, processes and practice. The emergent figure differs from the figure of origination through the operation of reconfiguration required by the project exercise.

The dissolution of the Sears Tower premise without clear intention produces a non-resolution. Le Corbusier removed the ground as a means of releasing the architecture from social and societal platforms. In doing so, he relieved the part, the architecture, from its duty to the whole whereby freeing it. It is not clear what beneficial consequences our relieving of the Sears does have. Furthermore, in addressing the urban question, what is required of the city to surpass the modernist positioning of the building on a ground in a field?

The trace is gone. What is presented instead is a homogeneous non-hierarchical set of lines which configure potentials of heterogeneous space. In asking what the diagram of the whole is and what the diagram of the parts are, one cannot help but consider how or rather if these two diagrammatic resolutions should be reconciled.

The next perceptible transformation of the city may be a matter of development from figural space to formal objectifiable space. The proposed direction in regards to urban form may be towards either mimicry or towards intervention. In the context we have produced, I ask to consider the difference and differential functions of aggregate and agglomerate. We use the word aggregation and understand it as something clean, orderly and understandable, but the possibility of aggregates bearing the type of formal specificity that we are loathe to produce is all but an impossibility.

If the function of aggregation and the goal of digital production is to beget similar yet unlike parts, I still do not understand how we have done that, and what, as aggregates, are the purpose of the parts. While my project may not so successfully illustrate the following lines of question, they are topics that are ripe within the discussion. Understanding how aggregates function within the whole, as parts. As a means of clarifying this, I have indexed the inter-aggregate and intra-aggregate relations that my method of relieving the Sears has produced within my project. The inter-aggregate relations consist of singular, compressive deformation, abutment which implies perpendicularity, and adjacencies of impenetrable bonding. The intra-aggregate relations are all classified as being “on” one another and not discrete. These differ being either a configuration of balance, producing and active relation, or a configuration of three point restive relation.

While it can be understood that the architecture of the ground is not complete until it is animated by that which is built upon it, the evolution of the diagram is animated only by and through its development. The ground does not fully exist before the next building rests upon it. As regards to figural relations, what I have intended to implicate herein has to do more with the relationship produced between that which is above and that which is below, or rather that what is below that which is below. Distances are sloped. Because buildings are of short distances, they cannot necessarily be sloped.

7 minutes spoken

Facts wear. Reality is consumed.

DIACON

Towards Final Review

Making Sense:

1a. Figure/Ground, i.e. Aggregation

1b. Parts/Whole, i.e.Aggregation

2. Disciplinary Question of Autonomy: DIA-CON production of the diagrammatic icon or diagram icon

3. Architectural Implications

4. Urban position - City/Building Building/City

There have been varying points of both resistance and lack thereof throughout my unigroup process.

Relieving the Tower

The origin of our formal investigation here is the Willis Tower. Formerly known as the Sears Tower, the tower was originally conceptualized as structurally bundled tubes.

I would like to consider and perhaps implicate REM’s mid to late 20th century reading of individual floors as ‘virgin sites’ - grounds maintained via perpetual discontinuity. Our site, our project, is not a tower. But, we are accepting the premise and willingly appropriating those part to whole ideals projecting onto a sectional interrogation. By way of this acceptance, we are working with typologies, not topologies and the correlating set of disciplinary concerns.

So, the tower establishes a ground whereby aggregation is the politic, the method. My question becomes, as I unpacked the set, peering inside and exposing the constituents: Does only architecture, that is building, aggregate. Or does politic too not also aggregate? For politic to aggregate, whence by producing as its consequent structure urban form anew. Can this activation of grounds maintain or perhaps reconstitute a position of autonomy, and within the urban feild. Out of this line of thought then, does the thing, the architecture, continue to qualify as autonomous if it is responsible for a product other than a simulacra or REplication of itself within the feild?

SECTion

(Move forward and backward so that each slide plays multiple purposes, fast and slow.)

4. Le Corbusier removed the ground as a means of releasing architecture from the social or societal constraints (wrong word). He relieved the part from its duty to the whole, freeing it. What have we done here to the ground of the city other than reinforce it?

2. The disconnectedness of the aerial plots seemingly conflicts with the fact that together they add up to a singular megaform or building.

My understanding of a hope of the work has been to establish a position, within the productive realm of the tower-aggregate through which to negotiate a typological shift.

There is effectively no ground until Architecture produces it as such.

What is the regime of aggregate autonomy?

What is the figure that emerges?

How does this figure that emerges differ from the figure of origination?

What is the diagram of the whole?

What is the diagram of the parts?

Can these be reconciled - or rather should they really?

In exercise, once acted upon, the lobby is redefined, reconstituted. The lobby then serves as the new ground. It is the point of arrival of multiple forms.

My goal was to play with the middle ground, with the same mindset that one would rather dwell in the rabbit hole than construct a way out of it.

One of the architectural implications that my diacon has produced is the necessity of rethinking requirements of general and specific inhabitation at every differential.

140-160 Words per minute = 800 words.

5. Is the next perceivable transformation of the city a matter of development, from figural space to formal objectifiable space. We use the word aggregation, and understand it as something clean and orderly, but the possibility of aggregates of that formal specificity occurring in the city is all but an impossibility. I ask to consider in the context we have produced, the differential of aggregate and agglomerate. What is the proposed direction in regards to urban form, towards mimicry or intervention?

If the function of aggregation and the goal of the digital is to produce similar yet unlike parts, how have we done that? What, as aggregates, is their purpose? What is required of the city to surpass the modernist positioning of the building on a ground in a field?

'Jog' the section