We build walls, like Vitruvius, to be pure and homogenous. However, if we slice through the walls of Vitruvius, and the prefabricated walls in a building in Winnipeg Today, they would bear no resemblance to one another. To accommodate both the ideal of architecture and the reality of building in a Northern climate, we have developed technologies that we can hide inside the wall. Perhaps if we had not thought of the wall the way Vitruvius taught us to, then we may not have designed all its layers in the way we have, compacted and, more importantly, hidden. The ideals we impose on our most basic tool, the wall, is indicative of the way we value space in general, both natural and artificial. If we were to envision this threshold between interior and exterior differently, we would regard the space differently. �
For my project, I will investigate the hidden space of the wall. The goal of the project is to explore new paradigms of the wall in the Canadian context, historical and environmental. The project takes on the wall as an iconographic symbol as well as technological system.
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Much has happened in the past few weeks, and I will give a brief overview of these events.
When I began the project, I wanted to find space in Point Douglas where I could cut into an existing building envelope, preferably a home. The wood frame wall of most typical home constructions is in fact a "void wall". The cavity spaces inside the wall are the spaces where we hide vital infrastructure. By cutting into the wall, and revealing the hidden inside the wall I would do two things. First, I would identify the systems as they relate to the lived world. And second, by revealing hidden activity, I would alter my understanding of architecture, and its effects on our perceptions of internal and external spaces. �After a good few weeks of searching, I was generously offered space in a home. However, for a number of reasons, I have decided that the project will not be built in Point Douglas. Rather, I will build my own space here on campus, and go through the same exploration, closer to Studio, the lab equipment, etc... There are disadvantages and advantages to both situations (building on campus versus in Point Douglas), and I am going with my gut on this one.
(aside: Thanks very much to the good folks I have met in Point Douglas and helped me to get the space, but more importantly, introduce me to the neighbourhood and its various facets. I am still very keen to develop work in Point Douglas, and hopefully, this can happen in the future).
The plan now is to build a black box on campus. The space is defined by the walls that enclose it: a wood framed room closed and sealed: a non-space, a void space. After the space comes to be, I would enter the space, and begin to define it by revealing the layers of the wall in that space, creating new space. I have two roles to play in this project, and each role comes with its own set of questions. First, I will define the system that is the wall for establishing the black box space. What are they? The composite wall is a complex organism - is it autopoetic? What are the minimum layers or systems that make up this wall for it to limit space (and do what: sustain inhabitation)? Is there such a thing as space without someone to inhabit it? This last questions lends itself to defining my second role, that of observer/eventual inhabitant or the void space. I will have to enter into the black box (how?) and then transform the walls so that it can sustain me. But sustain me how? What is the essence of Architecture? In this sense, the walls and I take on the role of two performers. How will we interact?
The transformation of the black box is an evolutionary process. But it is also the site for recording the transformation. Similar to my last term's final installation, Curio, I intend to draw on the box, inside, outside, above, and all around. It is critical that both the drawing and whatever armatures, insertions, details and constructs are considered at the same scale.
The transformation is also directly linked to how my body, and its different senses measure and define space. We think that seeing space dominates all of our other perceptions of space. And this is largely true in the modernist context. But it is another contradiction, like the Vitruvian and the prefabricated wall section. Building architecture with all of our sense is essential to exploring the new paradigms of the wall.
Another rule I would like to establish throughout the process of this project, is to recycle/reuse existing building materials as I start to cut into the walls. Habitat for Humanity runs the Restore in town and there are all kinds of building materials they sell there. The black box itself will be built from dimension standardized parts: 4 X 8 plywood sheets, 2 X 4 lumber beams, rigid insulation, pipes, circuitry, etc... As I take apart these prefabricated components, what I will add should embody the same cultural phenomena which produced these materials and their attributes in the first place.
The project embodies the idea of expanding the systems and codes that are embodied in the architecture of the room. Bu building into the order of the wall, its expansion becomes an example of what potentials lies in the materials and language of building we employ today. The new spaces are there, and with rigorous and imaginative interpretations of their layers, they will be revealed, and their phenomena will affect our vision of architecture.
