on windows

windows. the first thing that comes to mind is uncertainty. we build walls, but are not so sure of them. not sure that they are supposed to be there. a window is a hesitation. an uncertain commitment to something rigid. an acceptance that our walls are not absolute. dissatisfaction with our tools as incomplete, indefinite, representations of our expression. windows make walls movable. open walls up to, and acknowledge the possibility that walls can always be better. if not at that moment, in that circumstance, some other. the vocabulary of windows exists for a reason, a concession, plea, that walls are indefinite.

on walls

When you build something, you create a channel for human interaction. An interface that allows discrete entities to connect. Walls. People don't talk to walls. People talk to people. Through walls. Architectures embedded with symbols and meaning. Vocabularies. When walls become dynamic transformative structures, what happens to the vocabularies that used to surround them. What new symbols do they express, and meaning do they represent. How do we define, redefine vocabularies. A building facade, a series of nodes, windows. Objects suspended on a two-dimensional grid. Entry points with variables brightness, movement... When a wall becomes a screen, the nodes break free. A new dimension to a structure is added. Where do you draw the line in terms of playing with old meaning, and introducing new. genre film. Using established vocabularies of genre as a starting point, and diverging from there. Short cuts to break free from and surprise. Transformation in media happens all of the time. These conventions have already been addressed, broken, time and time again. It still interests me though what these transformations will look like in architecture, with such an strongly anchored vocabulary.

Speaking of walls and surprise. The other day a member of this class typed his thesis proposal onto my facebook wall. If we were in another time, where facebook didn't exist, and I lived in a wooden shack, I think he probably would have thrown it up on the wall of my shack with a crayon. At least that is what it felt like he was doing. There is meaning attached to the way we move around walls, and talk to people through them. I don't feel this way about other comments on my facebook wall. By that I mean other people wouldn't have written on my shack. Just this person. Everyone moves around walls differently. People make marks on them. You learn about people trhough those marks. SOme walls are more rigid. Some crumble when you touch them. Some walls let you see certain people more than others.

aChronicle

A small, black, hand transcribed book chronicling the night from 8pm to 4am of Saturday, September 8th in the year 2007. Flipping through the book either from beginning to end or jumping from page to page tells a story. Each page has a message, a text message, a piece of communication sent by one of you to someone else within the real world from a cellphone.


This is a document of that message, that moment. Physical. It it tells a story, a version of one, a history, pertaining to an isolated moment in time. From here each page is open. Open as an finite piece of space. You can add to that space, build on it, by drawing lines. A new dimension. Every person who opens the book can add to a page. A drawing of their impression of the text, instant, visceral and more complete.


The consumer is also the producer. Technology is the means to bridge this gap. This project addresses the fundamental human desire to document themselves, store knowledge. Extend some version of the physical self onto the world. It takes a traditional book, and uses technology to change the way that it is made. The experience of the book is augmented, changed. Text messaging is a new language. A shift in communication. A different use of language, somewhere between oral, and literal. incorection of the gramaticallly. This project preserves the traditional design of a book, and the variable is hidden within this form.




***Thanks to all who participated!