Narrative & Counter Narrative

After the harsh mid-term, the project is a arduous journey for me: to rethink, reduce and refine. The thought located at the community garden aspect. However, the pervious thought of theater projection/social housing is still haunting me.

For me, the Stalled Construction Site is still a very complex social problem which involved both political and capital power. It's the result of the conflict between these two powers which are both main inner forces that drive the infrastructure to grow.

From the study of the green open space near the site, I thought that nature is another inner force that drive the infrastructure to grow and it is almost a counter-force compared to political and capital power.

The force and counter-force are:

Climatic/de-Climatic;

Production/Consumption;

Restorative/Stimulative.

Last Friday, the talk w/ Robert brings me back to so many idea I have before. Especially the theater aspect. It feels like I was suddenly back to the beginning of the project, in a good way. There must be a reason that I cannot totally comfortably reduce my project to a community garden and after the talk, I started to think about this reason. I guess, I still see the stalled construction site as a complex thing which is really hard to be resolved. The community garden, the theater and the social housing are all the program that give answer to this complex problem in different aspects. But what will be the relationship among them?

Thanks to my English 124 class. The topic we discuss these day is Narrative & Counter-Narrative. I am still not 100% sure about the definition of Narrative & Counter-Narrative, but basically, if "Narrative" is "telling a story", then "Counter-Narrative" is telling that same story in a different way.

“in this sense, a 'counter-narrative' is an alternative way of narrating events, and this alternative way of narrating events might contradict or be different from the most accepted narrative”(Sarah-our English professor).

For me, the relationship among the community garden, the theater and the social housing is actually the relationship between "narrative" and "counter-narrative". All of them are narratives to the stalled construction site and they are counter-narrative to each other. Since they are counter-narrative to each other, it shows the complex inner forces that compete within the stalled construction site.

Now, the question pointed to "who will be inner force that drive these three different programs?"

I am setting up a play.

The architect brings the idea of the community garden; A choreographer who lived in Brooklyn passed the community project designed by the architect and was attracted by the project. He found so many similar spacial aspect of the community garden compared to that of the theater setting. He asked the resident who was hanging out there:"What did you do here at night?" "Nothing. We don't usually come at night." The choreographer had an idea.

The choreographer adapted the community garden into a theater at night. The play involved both the actors and the staffs who in charge of the lighting, the pulleys, the sound, since the "transparent floor" enables the perspective of audience to extend to the movement of all the staffs.

Winter, since there is hot water running in the pipes, the homeless start to get around the pipes and even stack their bodies among the pipes.

No body know who brings the Boston ivy, but someone grow the ivy there! The vine start to make the transparent floor more and more solid. It's like a lawn in the sky, sunlight becomes green.

The building maintain staffs begin to complain! The vine even extend inside the mechanical room of the building. It seems it's going to intertwine the machines!

Somebody cannot take their boxes down because the vine twisted among the pulley.

The play at night changes a lot, now the lighting focuses on intergraded the ivy into the play.

The developer started to worry. It seems this supposed-to-be temporary structure is getting more and more "heavy" and it is very hard to take down.

The parking lot next to the site completed. People start to drive here to place their plants. On weekend, there is even a community market for people to exchange goods there.

The residential building next to the site completed. People enjoy a great green view outside there window.

......

No body will know what will happen last. We cannot predict how it will be. Because it is driven by so many forces - people- and it grows by its own. It is impossible for any individual to determine the fortune of it now. Once it obtain the inner growing forces, it becomes the infrastructure now.

The next step will be the question of Representation.

Before Mid-term

Although this post is written after the mid-term review, I tried to first gather my thought before the mid-term review, then see how it goes after the mid-term.

My approach to the stalled construction site is to find its situation and the "problems" it create then find a solution to that.

The first thing I noticed about the stalled construction site (abbreviation for "SCS") is the disjunction between the SCS and the existing urban pattern. It made me feel the SCS is like the scar on the urban pattern, both from a bird view and a street view. So I tried to look for a "pattern" that can be injected and cure the scar, which is the "green" I notice from the bird view photo. It seems for me, the "green" is like a universal "plug-in" that can be put anywhere within a urban pattern without creating disjunction. What's more, from two different photos but both taken in Williamsburg, the green add a restorative feeling to the neighborhood. Consequently, I started to look into urban farming and made it as my program for now.

After some research of urban farming, I found that the productivity of urban farming is promising, for during WW II, the Victory Garden actually make up 40% of the nation's produce supply. Imagine that all the SCS be developed into the urban farming, its productivity, which is one kind of energy output, cannot be underestimated.

What's more dramatic, there is a quote from the Detroit Chief of Police Ella M. Bully-Cummings：“... the Urban Farming Community gardens help cut down on crime.” This related back to the some of the unsafety issue addressed in one New York Times article, "They went forward with all this stuff, and now we're paying the price," said community activist and Williamsburg resident Phil DePaolo, who said the metal frames and vacant lots strewn across his neighborhood are a magnet for drug addicts and homeless people.

He kept describing that "An area where you had factories and life, you [now] have emptiness and darkness, and it increases the fear factor in the community,"

Indeed, the uncertainty and unsafty created by the emptiness (in terms of activity) and darkness of the SCS are actually consuming this neighborhood, both physically and psychologically.

So, in addition to the urban farming, I am thinking to bring in illumination activity at night too, such a huge projector to project movie or performance at the wall.

Back to the urban pattern. After the consideration of the program, I started to look at the formal language of the program.

Usually, there is no formal connection between the SCS and the rest of the urban pattern. They are two totally different formal languages.

Thanks to Catie's suggestion, the formal barrier between the SCS and the existing urban pattern could actually be resolve by taking it as a "continuos landscape", a landscape that wrap around both languages, translating them and fusing them. Visually, both the SCS and the existing urban pattern become the support of this "continuos landscape"; Physically, the structure of the "continuos landscape" enables people to move across the SCS and the existing urban pattern.

This "continuos landscape" can exist in many scales. It can exist within 2-3 buildings; or it can grow and take over even the street, becoming a bridge flying upon the street; finally, in vision, it might become a superstructure that to cover the neighborhood, setting up a new skyline of the Williamsburg.

Without doubt, I had two approaches to the SCS, one in terms of program and another one in terms of structure. The next step might be to create a link between them.

a revival of a neighborhood

The trip to Williamsburg is conflictive. On one hand, we see brand new shining high-rise steel frame housing; but next to these housing, there might be an old, slipshod low-rised brick building. The conflict is here.

(picture of the Williamsburg Bridge and the Dominos Factory)

The story started with the past of Williamsburg. Williamsburg used to be a factory area with dark streets and crime spots. Along the time, people who lived here would move to upper Queen if they got the fortune. No body wanted to go out after dark.

At the time of May 11, 2005, the city passed a large-scale rezoning of the North Side and the Greenpoint waterfront. Most of the areas were rezoned to be residential area and it initials the "condo boom" in the Williamsburg.

Thanks to these large rezoning and the housing projects, people in Williamsburg started to see their neighborhood changing from a scaring place to a nice brand new place to live.

However, when the city decided to trade the large tax breaks with 20% of affordable housing provided by these new residential buildings, the dilemma came to these under-construction projects with the unwillingness of developer to give up their profits to the affordable housing.

The stalled construction sites are just the right expression of these conflicts. It's a representation of the new development and hope and at the same time, the fail of the new development and hope. It's like a sudden hits to the neighborhood when they saw their dream is coming true, is coming along.

The stalled construction site is like a scar on a beauty. It's like an inconvenient truth to both the neighborhood and the larger public. How will this "ugly truth" affect the continuing development of Williamsburg? What can we, as architects, do to this? Where is the breakthrough of this "problem"?

Finally, I wanted to sincerely thank the Engelberts and the Bernard Mass Foundation for providing fund for our trip; David Maundrell who hosted us and shared his thoughts about his neighborhood with us; Paul who showed us his office and gave us insightful suggestions about practicing.

UG4 Studioblocs_System Drawing

Here is the final system drawing of all the 12 studioblocks. I try to draw this system in a more abstract way, more like a testing between meaning and feeling which are the two conflict parts I kept struggling when I drew the drawing.

Although this is not so much a clear, legible drawing, I still like the intertwining aspect of it as it collapses surface, movement and connection at the same time with working trace. This intertwining situation, I believed, is what infrastructure always has to face. It actually means, it cannot be taken apart: one subtle move of a small gear will lead to a change to the whole machine. This might be the very substantial inner force that shapes, nurses and raises infrastructure.

UG4 Studioblocs_shift_Rails

The first warm-up project for UG4~!

Project_Studioblocks

The project stared with a cubic volume divided into 12 individual pieces which got assigned to each studio member randomly.

Then we have to fill some marbles in it and have fun! ~lol~

I stared the idea with a thinking about marbles' movement. Not only marbles moves around the space, but also marbles act as the mechanical "infrastructure" for others movement.

The first thing I made is this "Marble Seesaw" whose kinetic part was actually accomplished by a marble. This "Marble Seesaw" can enable the marble on the right hand side to jump to adjacent studioblock volume when another one falls down on the left hand side. However, after several test with Chelsea, it didn't work that well. This lead me to think about what else can this seesaw do.

Then I was inspired by the mine rail both from amusement parks (This is one of my favorite game in the amusement parks.) and movies such as The Joinery to the Center of the Earth and Indiana Jones. (Here is a good demonstration how interesting the mine rail is! "Mine Car Chase")

So I imagined the marbles being the small carts rolling on the rails made by basswood sticks and the seesaw can be a movable-rail that shift the movement of the marbles. Especially when there is a moment where the rail is broken and the "cart" jump from one rail to another.

Here is the diagrams that show how the marbles will jump from rails to rails and finally go in to my neighbor's volume.

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I also wanted to emphasis the close relationship with my neighbors. This emphasis was showed in passing marbles with Chelsea, Kyle and Dexter ; having phsysical connection with Chelsea and Kyle; continuing surface patterns from Chelsea.

Here shows the lock with Chelsea. It's a mechanical lock.

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Here is the link with Kyle. It's a slide-in lock.

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Here are several pictures with my volume locked with Chelsea and Kyle's volume. They also shows the facade pattern that continues from Chelsea's and blend into a similar "chaos" with the basswood sticks inside my volume.

Here is shows the evolution of my Studioblock volume.

Here is the Final drawing of my Studioblock volume.

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Hello, World!

Just a test~

Hello, World!