Forgotten spaces

[1][2][3] Anargyros Drolapas

“The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flaneur finds the world ‘picturesque’” [Sontag, in her 1973 publication On Photography]

Nostalgia exists in my work through the photography and documentation. I’m very drawn to the camera as a tool of representation. Stewart discusses writing that unfolds in space. In the same way art and photo gives a material existence to an idea. My architectural work is very process-driven so documentation becomes an important element in freezing moments/memories in time.

The Eames power of ten raised ideas of the hyperobject: ideas/phenomenon that are massively distributed in time and space to the extent that their totality cannot be realized in any particular local manifestation. In the same way buildings often operate in a bigger-than-life scale. Representational tools become critical in our communication and proposal of space. The translation of an idea can materialize when a concept gets built in a micro representational scale and photographed in a way that engages the macro.

 

[4][5] Emily Nix, courtyard between FAC and arch building

In Emily's photographs she is using a studio model as a transformative tool to reconsider what could be in landscape. The tiny model is photographed and inserted in such a way that gives the otherwise quite familiar pond a new identity. 

This video was made as part of a projection installation proposal for the desert. The site is in Arcosanti, Arizona and holds a lot of personal nostalgia. It’s a place I’ve driven out to with friends for the last 4 years. I filmed this tiny six-inch model with moving light and sound in an attempt to communicate the surrealism I feel when in the desert. The main shape of the sculpture is a curved system that holds two layers of transparent surfaces. These screens take projection and light while framing, rather than obstructing, the view of sky above and ground below. 

Being in the desert gives me a large sense of connectivity to landscape. There’s a vastness/roundness to the sky I hoped to highlight with the sweeping screen.

[screen in invented context]

Prompt 2. Refer to the text and poetically describe the essential/intrinsic qualities of an everyday type of space that fascinates you and in some way or another is a type of site that is an important part of your work. Deconstruct it, describe it as a social construct, how it is shaped by language, signs, cultural understandings, history, or any other creative insights you can think of.

I’ve always felt great nostalgia and fascination with laundry mats. They exist like time capsules, always retro and outdated. Laundry mats here in Gainesville are microcosms of the larger Florida fabric. They have a strong feeling of community and ritual. Their walls and windows are never fully closed so you always feel connected to the immediate outside. It’s a place where people from all over join in a moment of chore.

Laundry mats always humbled me to slow down and be present with the auxiliary routines that keep my life balanced. I would often bring a book to read and relish in the two hours of sitting still.

“In the topography of the suburbs is revealed the topography of the family, the development, a network of social relations and their articulated absences.” [Stewart, Prologue]

[6][7] Alex Chinneck

The latest artwork by British artist Alex Chinneck is titled ‘Open To The Public’, a surrealist installation where an oversized zipper opens up the facade of an abandoned office building. Chinneck facetiously reimagines a public space that is currently empty and facing demolition.
Laundry mats often become forgotten spaces as the city develops around them. Chinneck's work celebrates a forgotten space and its history by metaphorically opening it back up to the public. In a similar way laundry mats unzip their walls daily, open to the public, much untouched by the changing city