writing
The final brief "Ecstatic Fields" for Master (MArchD) Design Studio 7 (DS7) at the Oxford Brookes School of Architecture for the academic year of 2021-2022. Studio founder, Louise, taught within this as Design Tutor alongside lead Joel Chappell.
Education allows space for possibility. We share this to help expand and imagine thoughts of how and what architecture could be.
ECSTATIC FIELDS
Students are invited to consider an architecture of ecstatic collisions and constructions. Collisions are essential to the Universe. Life on Earth as we know it, would not exist without them.
To make these ecstatic extends from the purely functional into a realm of pleasure, excitement, and response. An architecture developed from detail, to surface, to walls and floors that performs both a functional and emotive role. If Baudrillard is right, and we live in an ecstasy of communication, how might we speculate on an architecture that reflects and extends this notion.
COLLISIONS
The Moon is the result of a collision. The origin of the Moon is usually explained by a Mars-sized body, called Theia, striking the Earth, creating a large debris ring around Earth, which then
accreted to form the Moon. This collision also resulted in the 23.5° tilted axis of the Earth, causing the seasons. The Moon controls tides. For many animals, particularly birds, the Moon is essential to migration and navigation. Dung Beetles would be lost without it.
At a somewhat smaller scale, Nuclear Power stations generate energy through nuclear fission. A bombardment-driven process where a subatomic particle collides with an atomic nucleus and causes changes to it, releasing energy. Or when a jam sandwich is squeezed, the jam oozes out between the slices of compressing bread. A worldwide collision of home and office has been
experienced, illuminating multiple fractures in previous rituals. How might we respond to this?
What collisions might generate the unexpected. A rubbing together of elements to create anew. A challenge chanced upon, or an argument between substances and senses. Elements and objects collide through gentle attraction or hurled enthusiasm. The imperfect, layered, loose-fit feel that results from these interactions removes architecture from the realm of the perfect object, a product of a single masterful sensibility, and turns it into an aggregation of experiences that anticipates the life of the building to come.
FIELD CONDITIONS
“All grids are fields, but not all fields are grids. One of the potentials of the field is to redefine the relation between figure and ground. Field conditions moves from the one toward the many, from individuals to collectives, from objects to fields.
A complete examination of the field conditions in architecture would necessarily reflect the complex and dynamic behaviours of architecture’s users (and extend this premise to non-humans) and speculate on new methodologies to model program and space. To generalize, a field condition could be any formal or spatial matrix capable of unifying diverse elements while respecting the identity of each. Field configurations are loosely bound aggregates characterised by porosity and local interconnectivity. Overall shape and extent are highly fluid and less important than the internal relationships of parts, which determine the behaviour of the field. Field conditions are bottom-up phenomena, defined not by overarching geometrical schemas but by intricate local connections. Interval, repetition, and seriality are key concepts. Form matters, but not so much the forms of things as the forms between things.” - Allen, S. (1985) ‘Field Conditions’, in Points and Lines. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, Pg. 90.
We are interested in the connection and disconnection of events that are unexpected and
mutable. An accretion and escalation towards qualities which are not fixed, but illusive, fascinating, and volatile. Seeking to accommodate that which is modern in nature, to recognise the wildness that exists within our cities, streets, and rooms. Not visiting the ‘Wilderness’ over there. This is it, here. A paradigm shift where we can understand what nature might actually be, not the myth. How we design to accommodate all that inhabits the Field, both visible and spectral. Not only humans, but animals, plants, water, dust, smoke, and the everyday debris that go unnoticed and unconsidered. That which exists only once tuned into, and ultimately, how we make that Field
ecstatic.
Rather than continuing the essentialist dogma imposed by classical thinking and extended by Modernism, the program seeks to disrupt the notion of a prescribed order and the sine non qua attitude through an architecture that illuminates our contemporary existence.
"No object, of nature or of art, exists without environment. As a matter of fact, the object itself can expand to a degree where it becomes its own environment.
The traditional art object, be it a painting, a sculpture, a piece of architecture, is no longer seen as an isolated entity but must be considered within this expanding environment. The environment becomes equally as important as the object, if not more so, because the object breathes into the surrounding and also inhales the realities of the environment no matter in what space, close or wide apart, open air or indoor." - Kiesler, F. (1966) Inside the Endless House. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Metamorphoses
In 8 AD the Roman poet Ovid wrote that mutability is in the nature of things. So he wrote who could imagine an eagle comes from an egg. But in Ovid’s poem things mutate in both directions, rocks become humans. The 250 myths he describes have inspired other artists from Shakespeare to Bernini. The writer described these changes, and the sculptor inscribed these transitions in marble with extraordinary manual skill. They required imagination, and the ability to transfer an image in the brain to paper through drawing. The increase in scale and size required to transfer a three dimensional image in the brain is astounding to the modern mind.
Contemporary digital technology enables this to occur virtually without an analogue process.
This changes attitudes to materials. 3D printing makes it possible to make tactile, and physical the results of this transfer of imagination. The question now for the designer is how can this be done. This requires a re-evaluation of materials, and preconceived notions about the nature of materials, and how they might be joined, if at all. The Modernist dogma, the notion of truth to
materials is a barrier to creative thinking in this direction.
Students will generate as series of Ecstatic Collisions, produced through analogue generative techniques and given volume through spatial modelling. 3D printing and 3D scanning is used to
interogate modern techniques and technology, whilst exloring and engaging with a social aspect to the work through volumetric games of exquisite corpse. This research leads into a large 3D printed tile, with X & Y boundries given, but not restriction to depth. The depth of surface in a Modern house is 2-3mm. In the Baroque period, this extended up to 600mm - 1m. These meet, nest or interlock with its neighbour. These ‘tiles’ accumulate as fragments of wholes - interchangable and mutable. These works form the basis and principles of final projects, which are expanded and determined by the student and their design tutors. Elements such as site, materials, and inhabitant are determined and extend the project towards the final submission in May.
These Ecstatic Collisions & Components form the criteria for an architecture, built upon developed ideas and principles. This enables students to extend the scope of their project. Developing an independent brief in terms of site, material, technology and inhabitant enables the student to apply additional criteria to their work to cultivate a coherent and imaginative project.
"Structure can be a model, metaphor for the world while at the same time remaining a thing in the world." - Aycock, A. (1978) Projects. MOMA 5
