Assignment: A Map/Model - "Interpretation of a Potentiality"

For Monday (01/25/2010) create a site map/model as follows:

1 scan your vellum map (crop it and post it here).

2 design your itinerary. This is a path through the map. It is not the same as the space you may have named as your promenade. It is a path through that space in which you identify/create opportunity (potentiality) for you to construct conditions (the two interventions from your assignment...not to be confused with the two "sites" that begin and end your promenade) that support/structure your promenade. You will probably have more than two, but you will only develop two. We discussed this is class. In order to make this path you will need to imagine inhabiting and moving through your map (experiencing it). I asked the question, "What does a path do when it takes a 'pause' as Eric described." You each have identifiable moments like this. These moments become jogs, knots, or voids along the path. This path is to become the path of your blade...to split your map in half.

3 once you have made this decision/incision you will plan and construct a shallow (bas) relief model of the city as you mapped it. This model will make use of relief together with collage. The collage material comes from your raw maps (pre-vic, sanborn, GIS), from your vellum map, from your sketches, from you photo-documentation (especially texture). The use of collage will impart tonal-material information of the model and will be a type of "micro relief". In other words, it will probably not be entirely smooth.

4 this model will be cut in half along the line described in 2. You will pull the sides apart to open up a void. This void is necessary for you to think of your grafting/intervening.

5 I gave you a new article, "Anchoring". Read it. In your written assignment, under the "issues" heading, this reading is mentioned as guidance for considering a "critical attitude toward the site as an interpretation of potentiality..." You must develop a way to conceptualize your interventions according to your experience, and the documentation of your experience, of St. Augustine. Remember your descriptive exercises (adjectives, adjectives, adjectives). This time you must "verb" your interventions...make them actions in the city by naming them as such. A verb requires a subject to be an intelligible expression. Name a subject. I demonstrated this with Stefan's project. He named the verb "learn" and I made him point to a spot along his itinerary. This spot I remember to have been a street of Victorian era porches. I said "gravity". So an intervention at this site could be called "learn gravity". Stefan would use the configurations in his map/model to make an intervention. (This may or may not be Stefan's actual project....it is an illustration for all to use). The article will inspire you to get a deep grasp of the opportunities in your project. This is the "program" of your intervention mentioned in the written assignment. Adverbs could help you add detail. Know that all of this description and program is a point of beginning. The models must go beyond the program and words... "Although they fall short of architectural evidence, words present a premise. The work is forced to carry over when words themselves cannot." - from Anchoring.

6 we discussed the surgical repair of bones - pinning. Your interventions will pin the halves of the model back together. They act structurally in the map ACROSS the itinerary. They also act as markers/moments along the promenade. They are "ALONG the way". Consider these two directional actions as you build the interventions. The scale of this model is undetermined. However, since it is not very large the intervention models will be conceptual. They should create, contain, divert, control, etc, space at a conceptual level.