Category Archives: Event Specialist Achievement

Ultramoderne, Rhode Island School of Design (all images from the Ultramoderne website)

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this lecture, given by the co-principals of the architecture firm Ultramoderne and both instructors at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, in person, but I was able to view it online. Yasmin Vobis and Aaron Forest trade off discussing four of their recent projects, involving their experiments with cross-laminated timber (CLT), reimagining typological precedents, way-finding, and boundary making. The firm is interested in the dual definition they ascribe to the word “structure.” They articulate them as:

the structure (clean engineering + increased attention to materials) of Modernism (think van der Rohe)

&

the social structures which architecture can delineate and direct

I learned quite a bit about the firm through this lecture, as they go in-depth on four of their projects. I’ll recount some of key ideas from each of those projects.

1) Four Corners- a deconstruction of the typology of the New England barn structure. The firm uses CLT to bring contemporary flair to an exposition piece. They invert the structure, turning it from single, introverted volume into one composed of several angled masses.

2) Chicago Horizon- this was a contest wining design of a kiosk that was displayed in the Chicago Architecture Biennial and then went on to be installed permanently along the waterfront. It is concerned with questions of scale. A hulking wood mass serves as the roof, supported on the minimum -13- number of slender, rectangular columns. The roof references the horizon seen beyond it while also cutting off the sky from anyone beneath it. Drastically lowering the “sky” that was visible to one as they approached the structure.  

3) Weir Farm- this was a project that ended up as a simple way-finding system, with a couple layers of complexity over it. The site, sitting in a National Park in Connecticut, draws tourists to the view the grounds where the Impressionist painter J. Alden Weird resided, while locals spread out over the untamed, rolling landscape making up the remainder of the park. The Weir Farm project attempted to unify these groups, through a  periodically changing way-finding system. Humble cedar posts had three holes carved in them, which when peered though split the view into the traditional divisions known to landscape painters: foreground, middleground, and background. These holes would then be directed at different scenes throughout the park, with a rotating group of experts – ecologists, geographers, artists, etc. – deciding what they where showcasing. These posts could either be stumbled upon or could be included in the routes of the park rangers conducting tours.

4) Recess PS1- this entry to the MoMA PS1 contest is a meditation on what makes a boundary. Situated in New York, it grapples with the question, “how do create boundaries in dense places?” Their proposal is a two-layered, fifty foot tall structure which cuts off the enclosed area form the surrounding bustle and creates a unique interior experience, flanked by chain-link fence and columns that appear to be caught in a slow dance.

Architecture is an excellent example of mixing art and science, perhaps the most salient yet least discussed field that does so. While each of the above projects is attempting to answer an aesthetic or social question (the domain of art) it is limited by the constraints of engineering and transportation. Take for example the wooden roof of Chicago Horizon. The symbolism of the flat, hanging rectangle presented a number of technical issues. Among these was the question of the largest span possible with such a mass. The size was limited, in the end, by the trucks, which had to transport to panels of CLT from the plant to the site of assembly, to a length of 56 feet. The orientation of the supporting columns of this structure are an example of how the constraints of science can enhance the power of the art, thus demonstrating the symbiotic nature of their relationship. They were arranged in a radial pattern in order to evenly receive the force of the famed Chicago winds. At the same time, this radial pattern directed the attention of the people under the roof outward, towards the rush of the city and the calm of the sea.

Two of these projects, the aforementioned Chicago Horizon and Four Corners, experiment with the idea of void, a concept my project also grapples with. In my case, the void tells a history of things that have made their contributions and passed on: a fully-decayed nurse log and the early career of Buster Simpson, while in their case the void is a volume to be filled. The whole is made more complete when people wander through the Four Corners’ complex play of volumes, when people pass time under the man-made sky of the Chicago Horizon. This allows to me think about my void in a more active way, and to ask the question:

Is my void static or does something still move through it? If so, what is this thing? The continued development of the mycorrhizal fungus that takes root on nurse logs? The ongoing influence of Simpson’s commitment to a sustainable art? 

 More likely than not, it now represents my continued interest in the subjects of forest ecology and art, though these ideas.        

Image from the blog ISO50 

Buzz Saw Sharks- Leif Tapanila and the art of Roy Troll 

Last Friday I attended this talk put on by the UO Museum on Natural and Cultural History. I had seen the exhibit previously so I had some outside knowledge, primarily of the decades of debate that had gone on concerning how exactly a giant whorl of teeth was supposed to fit onto the body of a shark. This talk was primarily focused on looking at the actual fossils upon which our knowledge of  these creatures is based. I was interested to learn that the length of the sharks- though they were technically ratfish, as I learned- was all based on ratios of the measurements of the animal’s teeth. Some things I gleaned from this talk that either weren’t in the exhibit or I didn’t remember were:

1) The teeth of the Helicoprion grew successively bigger teeth as it aged. These teeth were then covered in cartilaginous fibre to prevent them from cutting into the sharks mouth as they began to wrap around to form the whorl. 

2) All of this animal’s teeth were connected to one root.

3) They could reach sizes of upwards of 25 feet.

I enjoyed learning about how the fossils were measured and analyzed in order to deduce the physical characteristics of the shark. Paleontology has always seemed mysterious to me, so it was very enlightening to hear somehow explain so clearly how one goes about learning from a fossil. Their method involved looking at bumps and other structures on the bones and then comparing those to the physical characteristics of other known creatures and extrapolated how flesh and other tissue would have attached to the jaw bones that were discovered. Also of interest to me, thanks to this class, was the role which the work of the artistRay Troll played in this presentation, and in the wider exhibit. Compared to the standard scientific images one sees, his drawings imparted a refreshingly feeling of life through their thick strokes and subtly blended colors. I also thought about what role they had as signifier and signified. Obviously, the drawings themselves were the signifier, but what was signified was more than just a basic representation of an ancient sea dweller. They imparted more of a narrative structure, which made the history of discovery in this discipline seem more engaging. I attribute this to the idea that we perceive something that has been artfully drawn to contain more of a story than the computer generated graphic image one typically sees in science textbooks. Both are imparting a message, but one expects to get more out of something that has been framed as “art”; one suspects a deeper meaning.

Image from National Geographic

This picture is an excellent example of an illustration that is much more interesting to look at than a similar image which could have been fashioned with a computer. Note the curtains which give the work another layer of meaning, as if all these ideas were performing through the decades across the collective stage of human scientific thought.  

These insights further underscored my project’s idea that the attention of the public can sometimes best be captured not with sleek materials and presentations, but with works of art which display the remnants of the work of the artist’s hands. The human-introduced element of roughness is valued in a world of right angles and straight lines. Works that display a sense of playfulness will prove to be the most enduring through time, because they will always remain accessible, being freed from association with a contemporary arts movement.