Assignment 1: Westside Academy Courtyard: Steven Holl

Steven Holl is an American architect and artist. To me, his style mostly represents shapes within shapes. When I look through his artwork and architecture I feel like he started with a boxy shape and then cut shapes out of it. Philosophically and architecturally his style is referred to as phenomenology, a style that incorporates the architect’s personal experiences into his work, understanding that the building has a need to be there both presently and in the future and the building has purpose beyond what it is physically used for. Phenomenology elaborates on the relationship between the building and the environment it exists in, not so much the building itself. Each building designed with this approach is crafted in a manner that allows for the space to be used for many different functions. Designing a space to have multiple different uses allows for the space to be used over a long period of time for many different purposes.

The West Side Academy Courtyard is a space that will hopefully be used long after our project is completed. As we design the space I feel that we should incorporate many different features that have multiple uses and can be maneuvered around to allow for many different activities to take place. From educational to recreational, the courtyard should teachers and students to have an escape from the desks and classroom walls.

I think that different green components should be included in the project to allow for "life" to be brought to the space. A rain garden on the roof would be a non-invasive way of adding greenery to the space without taking up any ground area. Also, if the courtyard were to be set up with different tiers and level the space could be used for many different things all at once. Also, by providing different levels and tiers the space could be used for both recreational and educational purposes at the same time as well. Different classes cold be in the same space at once, or classes could be divided in different groups. No matter what we decide to do, we need to incorporate a way for the space to be used for multiple different purposes and be malleable to the needs of the class or students using the courtyard.

Doris Salcedo

The work of Doris Salcedo has been compared to a mental archaeology of sorts. She appropriates materials, often domestic materials, which have been charged with meaning through everyday use, and she uses them in her work as a way of illustrating the burden of social and political conflict in a very tangible, local scale. It makes these larger conflicts feel real and close. Her work embodies the lives of the marginalized, addressing the notion of memories and the politics of forgetting these lives. There’s a real sense of loss and mortality in her work: in Colombia people sometimes just disappear, without a trace. No charges made, no body found. Her work explicitly deals with the void left by disappearance.

Her work, although it’s developed out of individual, personal components, also seems to have the power of community behind it: it acts as a kind of rallying cry almost. There’s a real sense of healing to the work too, so it deals not only with the violent act, but the healing that has to come for survivors. Her work Atrabiliarios illustrates this well, I think. She sees her work as a sort of perpetual witness, a kind of social conscience. Her work is not literal; it’s very subtle and fragile, but still very powerful.

Salcedo: “Colombia is a country full of widows. There was one widow, the widow of a political leader, who told me how difficult it was to continue living with objects that are reminders of her husband. Every morning you open the closet and the clothing is there. Every day you sit at the dining table and the empty chair is there, screaming the absence of that person. It can become a very difficult object to live with.”

1550 Chairs Stacked Between Two City Buildings / 2003 / Istanbul Biennial

My first design proposal for the courtyard attempts to reference Salcedo’s method and larger objective. It appropriates the image of the school chair, similar to how Salcedo uses the figure of the chair in “1550 Chairs,” in an attempt to depict history and recall past collective experiences. It is a subtle reference, but it gains strength through aggregation; the amassing of them in large quantity provides visual power. The image of the chair communicates both the physical absence of the past occupant as well as the open space for the future occupant. The aggregate form communicates both the individual and collective experience. Physically, the line drawing pattern would manifest as permanent floor paint on the ground.

Janine Antoni

The intimate body is of principle interest to the work of artist Janine Antoni, famous for blurring the lines between performance and sculpture in the early 1990s. Antoni's Gnaw famously characterizes her provocative style; displaying two 600 pound cubes of chocolate and lard respectively, that were bit, chewed and licked by the artist in an act of strenuous repetition. Upon inspection the work has preserved the mark of her body and it's relationship to the form of the piece. Gnaw, like many of Antoni's proceeding works, is at once a gesture of great intimacy and of her complete and utter absence in the space, leaving the viewer with truly only marks of process.

It is the honesty of the process in Antoni's work that I find consistent throughout her repertoire and what I found to be particularly applicable to thinking through the creative assignment regarding the shape of the Westside Courtyard. In regard to Antoni's sculptural portfolio; these pieces are astoundingly tender and fully aware of the object. You can detect the mark of time in works like Lick and Lather, in which she quite literally licked and lathered two portrait busts made of chocolate and soap sculpted in the image of herself.The time spent and the process taken in each and every one of these works is obvious- and terribly important. So, it was with this inspiration that I went again into the West Side Academy to spend time in the space. I recorded the audio of my walk through the space and created two poems in an act of documenting process- in which I was both integral and invisible to-

a.

Found the janitor in the back kitchen mopping hastily.
He says he doesn’t know what goes on after hours, but there is no way I’m going out there.

God forbid there is a fire.
It’s not happening on my watch.
And before you go... I’ve been wondering....
Why do you all think you can change the world here?
There is so much trash on the street.
Why don’t you start with the neighborhood. Don’t you care about the neighborhood?
I’m doing my part. I’m picking up the trash here.

Told him we all have to start somewhere. 

b.

                                                                                1.

17.83”

North

Hicks goes in there or whatever- she’s flipping out- throwing chairs- this and that- he call’s the parents- then we go on lock down- call the police-

what a pain in the ass.

2.

17.83”

West

Another day at Westside. I don’t know how he hasn’t lost it yet.

Not too many could survive here.

3. 7.58”

East

You can teach them however but

it doesn’t matter if it’s not how they do it at home. What’s your momma gonna do when you get out in the big fat world? Do you think they care about what goes on at home out there in the big fat world?

4

7.58”

South

You see, he wouldn’t let me solve his problem.

He is a nice boy but he doesn’t want to be in English. He got mad. He’s running in the hallways, calling people bitches. He didn’t want to be in English. 

Mel Chin’s work spans many years, different mediums and modes of practice.  The mode of practice that inspired me for this project was his public practice which deals with problems he sees in the world and draws attention to them through art projects.  His Fundred Dollar Bill project and Operation Pay Dirt are great examples of this. The Fundred Dollar Bills were copies of hundred dollar bills with the face in the center missing.  Students from around the United States drew in the face and the bills were going to be exchanged for real money to found the extraction of lead from the soil of Louisiana.

The thought process that is seen in the Fundred Dollar Bill project is present in the first intervention into the school.  We will be covering the windows facing the courtyard with paper and allowing students to create artistic expirations of what they think the courtyard will look like when the project is complete.  We are providing each student with a plan of the courtyard which they will cut out and paste on the paper that covers the windows. The students are the most affected by the architectural aspects of the school and the spaces they exist in for the greater part of every weekday.  Giving them a voice to decide what they see as being important is critical to the project.  I think it is the challenge of this project to create a framework for many of the suggestions that the students provide.