3c: SITES OF QUARANTINE

x6 Mississippi River 
x5 Louisiana 
x4 New Orleans
x3 Port of New Orleans
x2 District 13
x1 English Turn Site

THE MACRO: THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

The Mississippi River, 3,779 km (2,348 mi) long, is the second longest river, after the Missouri, in the United States. Its triangular drainage area, covering about 40% of the country and including all or part of 31 states, is approximately 3,250,000 sq km (1,250,000 sq mi), the third largest in the world.

THE MICRO: THE ENGLISH TURN & DISTRICT 13

District 13, known as River Park / Cut-Off /Lower Coast (commonly referred to as English Turn) is the south-easternmost District in Orleans Parish. It is like no other District in New Orleans, mostly because of its natural and non-urban setting. English Turn is the sharp bend in the Mississippi River and was named in 1699 by New Orleans’ founder, Sieur de Bienville, when he managed to convince a British expedition traveling upriver that they had reached a dead end. The British turned about, and France’s claim to Louisiana was thus made. English Turn has retained a rural quality to this day, with development constrained by its relative isolation.

ASSIGNMENT 3c: SITE OF QUARANTINE

We will understand site through an analysis of macro and micro scales.  Instead of identifying site as an isolated condition that ends at the property’s edge, you will begin to recognize it as a network that extends beyond visible and invisible thresholds.  The site research and analysis will be conducted in a collaborative manner and will consist of three elements: Research Collection, Site Model, and a Site Installation.  You will work in groups of 2-3 to collect and organize information on a specific scale of site.  Then, collaborate as a studio to build a site model that acknowledges the various conditions and scales of site.  

The focus of the analysis should be quarantine and isolation.  Analyze these scales of site through the lens of the studio’s focus.  How has the Mississippi River, Louisiana, New Orleans, Port of New Orleans, District 13, and The English Turn acted to enable or prevent conditions of quarantine?  

SITE: 
1:2 
MIILES

SITE: 
1:200 
FEET

ENGLISH TURN: FACING SOUTH

ENGLISH TURN: FACING NORTH

WORKSHOP 01

A series of videos from the Rhino workshop held Sunday, 3.28.10 have been posted HERE.  These cover Paneling Tools operations for 2D aggregation of your operative word diagrams.  Sorry, three of the videos have audio problems, so unfortunately you will not be able to listen to those.  Hopefully you can just follow along the video.

3b: ACTIVE FORM

“The designer of active form is designing the delta.  The means by which the form changes, not the field in its entirety, but the way the field is inflected.  The way the alteration multiplies across the field or reconditions a population or generates a network.  So while intensely involved with material and geometry, active forms are inclusive to but not limited to enclosure and may move beyond the conventional architectural site…….So here is a common art for shaping the object as well as how the object plays - the shape of the end piece as well as its repertoire.”   

-Keller Easterling, Disposition 

In architecture the line always represents something – material form, cuts, hidden elements, etc.  You have now constructed a diagram that should contain a field of lines, aggregated at various intensities.  Stage B of this project is to construct this diagram and to translate these fields into materiality.  We will be exploring the ideas of Active or Animate Form presented by Greg Lynn’s 1999 seminal book Animate Form, which acknowledges form as a resultant of inflicted forces and material responses. 

To begin, construct the diagram as a flexible two-dimensional material network.  Then, apply forces to this network that prompt it to bend, roll, split, fold, wrap into a three-dimensional form.  Therefore, Form is a resultant of material densities and intensities and external stimuli.   


PROJECT 3b: ACTIVE FORM  

AGGREGATION AND COMPOSITION

ag·gre·ga·tion 

1 : a group, body, or mass composed of many distinct or varied parts or individuals
2 : the collecting of units or parts into a mass or whole 

Biology, Ecology. a group of organisms of the same or different species living closely together but less integrated than a society.

com·po·si·tion

1 : the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole.

2 : the resulting state or product.

3 : manner of being composed; structure: This painting has an orderly composition.

4 : makeup; constitution: His moral composition was impeccable.

Studio,

I would like to clarify some of the concepts behind aggregation and relate it to what you have already learned from first year which is composition.  Aggregation is the concept and process of replicating and collecting  a part/cell/module to form a larger body.  Similar to composition there is a part to whole relationship, but with aggregation the whole is much more dependent on the parameters of the part.  With composition, the whole is often defined first and then the parts are “composed” to produce the overall effect.  In aggregation the part is defined and constructs the whole from the parameters of collection.  Thus, with aggregation the whole is constructed from a family of parts - alluding to the notion that while these parts may sometimes look extremely different there is a foundation syntax embedded in all of them.  


There is also a dependency difference between aggregation and composition.  With composition you have been taught that if you take away from or add to a well composed whole, the system fails.  With aggregation, the relationships are not so co-dependent.  If you take a component away, the whole can reorganize and re-stabilize.   

Here are two explanations of aggregation and composition that could relate to architecture but are actually extracted from a computer programming handbook:

Aggregation is a kind of association that specifies a whole/part relationship between the aggregate (whole) and component part. This relationship between the aggregate and component is a weak “has a” relationship as the component may survive the aggregate object. The component object may be accessed through other objects without going through the aggregate object. The aggregate object does not take part in the lifecycle of the component object, meaning the component object may outlive the aggregate object. The state of the component object still forms part of the aggregate object.

Composition is a kind of association very similar to aggregation except where the composite object has sole responsibility for the disposition of the component parts. The relationship between the composite and the component is a strong “has a” relationship, as the composite object takes ownership of the component. This means the composite is responsible for the creation and destruction of the component parts. An object may only be part of one composite. If the composite object is destroyed, all the component parts must be destroyed, or the reference and responsibility of the component part must be handed over to another object. Composition enforces encapsulation as the component parts usually are members of the composite object.

3a: MICRO-AGGREGATION DRAWING

    ASSIGNMENT 3a

[a] OPERATIVE WORD

Derived from the previous two assignments and our midterm discussions, define an operative word that describes your concept/strategy.   This word will be the syntax for you to develop a technique for embedding difference, variation, activity and gradation into the Quarantine Unit.  Begin this assignment by drawing this word as a vector or series of vectors: lines, polylines, curves, or splines

[b] OPERATIVE TOOLS

After illustrating your concept as a vector element, you will need to aggregate this element in order to begin to visualize how your operative word can begin to transform spatial conditions.     You are to choose one of the tools specified below to focus on in order develop a method for aggregation of these vectors.  Choose your tool thoughtfully – the tool you choose for vector propagation should reflect and not conflict with the concepts of your operative word.  The PT tools are paneling tools which is a plug-in for Rhino.  Information on these tools can be found here in the Paneling Tools Manual. 

Array Along a Path         Polar Array        PT Translate

Flow                             PT Rotation       PT Mean

Blend                            PT Scale           PT List

Offset                            PT Scale 1D      PT Shuffle

     Micro-Aggregation Process

[a + b] OPERATIVE DIAGRAM

Using the operative word as your syntax and the operative tool as your propagation method draw an 18” x 18” diagram that illustrates a vast arrange of  different levels of intensity that correspond to the spatial organization and activities developed in Project 2 – The Quarantine Unit.  This diagram should be understood as a two-dimensional diagram of the spatial organization of your unit.  Your diagram must be a construction of vectors: lines, polylines, curves, or splines.  Thus, your strategies for spatial separation, difference, and activity should be calibrated into how you draw and aggregate the line.    


For examples see the Micro-Aggregation Lecture.   

MIDTERM: A STORY OF FORTY

IMAGE: MANHATTAN TRANSCRIPTS, Bernard Tschumi
For the midterm presentation you are to tell us the story of your quarantine unit through a graphic narrative that illustrates forty conditions of quarantine.  These conditions could be spatial conditions, temporal conditions, material conditions, structural conditions, prevention conditions, etc.  The main concern is that everything you design/model/draw from here on out is being done with the intent of developing the narrative and revealing the concept.  

Choose one of the following representational mediums/techniques to focus on.  All 40 scenes/drawings/images/models should be an exploration of the one technique of representation.  [Note:  Previous work can be incorporated into the 40 scenes if it is crucial in telling the story, but everything executed this week should be an investigation of one representation technique]    

-Collage

-Orthographic / Line Drawing

-Rendering

-Axonometric

-Physical Modeling / Collage

MIDTERM REQUIREMENTS

MANUAL OF ARCHITECTURAL POSSIBILITIES: QUARANTINE

In a few days a research publication by David Garcia Studio called MAP will be publishing an issue on Quarantine.  Here are a couple boards from the issue for your inspiration.  


Four projects are treated in this issue: A Domestic Isolation Unit, an Instantly Quarantinable Farm, a Zoo of Infectious Species, and a Quarantined Library on a cargo ship. Along with the projects, the fact page focuses on a series of topics regarding quarantine, from the biological to the political, the geographical and beyond.


MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) is a publication of research and visions; research into territories, which can be concrete or abstract, but always put into question. Map is not a magazine (it only has two pages) and is not a book (it is issued twice a year). Map presents itself as a folded poster (A1) where information is immediate, dense and objective in one side, and architectural and subjective on the other. Map is a guide to potential actions in the built environment, a folded encyclopedia of the possible, a topography of ideas, or a poster on the wall. 

WEEK TWO: SITE + ENERGY

This week we will be focusing on strategically grafting your internal spatial concept for the quarantine unit to the site.  The site is the territory surrounding the Erato Street Cruise Terminal at the Port of New Orleans.  This is not a specific building footprint but rather a territory for you to investigate and determine where and how to situate a quarantine unit.

Up until this point our concern with quarantine has fundamentally been aimed at questions of epidemic control, but at its most basic form, quarantine is a strategy of separation and containment.   These strategies of containment and quarantine also have roots in urban planning, geopolitics, international trade, ethics, immigration, and more.  Thus, as you now begin to position your project within the City of New Orleans work to broaden your definition of quarantine and start to investigate how elements of quarantine, separation, and isolation are also working within the site.  

03.01.10 > SITE VISIT > A QUARANTINE SURVEY

Use this site visit to document the basic elements of the site through photos, sketches, notes and diagrams.  In addition to taking a general survey of the site, create a quarantine survey of the site.  This means document how the site presents spatial separation through conditions like clean and dirty, safe and dangerous, foreign and native, etc.