As you run your fingers over the surface of a rusted-out column, multivalent realities manifest themselves: first, the blobby amoeboid bloom of oxidization on the metal, speaking of an uneven sealing coat applied to the column, with rust forming first where paint was thin or the iron content of the steel below most assertive of its chemical realities. Next, the friable grittiness of the rough-finished surface, result of the flight of electrons from iron to oxygen, degrading iron to oxides and/or hydroxides which powder, flake and fail. You look up and notice rust around the bolts which, via inturned angles, connect the column web to the beam flange above; you reverse construct the joint, wonder at the organizational dynamics which created this detail — perhaps a welded joint would have necessitated an additional union contract, or the designer knew best the mode of light gauge steel framing and merely didn’t consider welding.
The world of materials is one rife with complex interactions and repeating rituals which give rise to the phenomena humans interact with on a daily basis. Volatility at all levels of engagement must be diffused or absorbed in flexible solution on the level of the mechanical connection. The formative complexities of the architectural field can often be typified by the material interactions an architecture engages; to explore the expression of these material machinations in the formal, representational, and organizational morphologies of the designed object is my thesis intent.
In moving toward this endpoint, there are two levels of engagement which I think warrant investigations into possible expressive complexities. One is the large-scale organizational formations which dictate the process of Architectural design — this scale involves organizational theory and the constantly changing models of practice present in our field. In this arena I’d like to take on the dissolution of Architecture into an increasingly complex network of contractor and sub-contractor relationships, a network which is stretched to the point of failure by the mercurial realities of construction juxtaposed against the static nature of our designed representations. The other is the micro-level interaction of materials which ground architecture in the physical world, discussed by Reiser + Umemoto as “asignifying signs” or the outward representations of specific syntactical interactions at the scale of the molecule — these realities are perhaps the primary definer of textural, phenomenal and visual classification of the designed object; it is the asignifying sign which is most effective at revealing overarching truths regardless of the culture the observer is coming from as it is not a culturally derived symbol but a material one.
The typology which provides the most direct vehicle for analysis of both of these realms is the detail, that drawing type which allows people at the top to dictate formations at the bottom. It is a drawing type which has been theoretically discarded, reduced to a selection from a binder of standards, delegated to the trades at the lower echelons of the contractual relations which now typify our practice.
In moving toward this endpoint, there are two levels of engagement which I think warrant investigations into possible expressive complexities. One is the large-scale organizational formations which dictate the process of Architectural design — this scale involves organizational theory and the constantly changing models of practice present in our field. In this arena I’d like to take on the dissolution of Architecture into an increasingly complex network of contractor and sub-contractor relationships, a network which is stretched to the point of failure by the mercurial realities of construction juxtaposed against the static nature of our designed representations. The other is the micro-level interaction of materials which ground architecture in the physical world, discussed by Reiser + Umemoto as “asignifying signs” or the outward representations of specific syntactical interactions at the scale of the molecule — these realities are perhaps the primary definer of textural, phenomenal and visual classification of the designed object; it is the asignifying sign which is most effective at revealing overarching truths regardless of the culture the observer is coming from as it is not a culturally derived symbol but a material one.
The typology which provides the most direct vehicle for analysis of both of these realms is the detail, that drawing type which allows people at the top to dictate formations at the bottom. It is a drawing type which has been theoretically discarded, reduced to a selection from a binder of standards, delegated to the trades at the lower echelons of the contractual relations which now typify our practice.
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