Perry Kulper Workshop at Bartlett

Ollie Palmer — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:39:24 +0000

This week, the AVATAR students at the Bartlett School of Architecture have been working under the guidance of visiting lecturer Perry Kulper (University of Michigan). Perry’s work investigates the potential of methodology in the working process, aiming not to create buildings, but rather to progress the cultural effectiveness and agency of architecture. Whilst working in the field of architecture and architectural education, he often eliminates buildings as an outcome, and has produced hundreds of provocative, rich and intensively laboured drawings. Spending four days under his tuition was a privilege, and the general consensus from the year group is overwhelmingly positive.

Through his academic career, Perry has identified 14 different methods that can be used within architecture, independently or interdependently. On our short dive into this esoteric pool, we studied four of these methods and worked intensively for three-and-a-half days on one of them.

The brief was to work on a motel using an Edward Burtynsky photograph as a site plan, using one of four of Perry’s methods.

Kim Walker and I worked together, and investigated gestural translation. Gestural translation, to explain in one sentence, is a process by which a gesture is translated into an architecture. The gesture can be as meaningful or meaningless as you wish, and it is generally the way in which it is translated that creates the interest.

We chose this photograph of a fragment of a ship being broken down as our site:

The process then underwent four stages:

1. The gesture

Our chosen gesture was bursting a balloon filled with water. This action took place over a scale of milliseconds and was captured using high-speed photography and video.

Finding commonalities

We found commonalities in the site, the gesture and the motel through changing state of being over time:

The ship was originally constructed from minerals from all over the world, then used for however long its lifetime was, and now is being broken down to return to its original mineral state. We could say that the ship is in a transitory state, when measured over a period of years.

The motel will serve as a temporary place for its visitors. Its activity is a transitory state, when measured over a period of days.

Whilst being burst, the balloon is effectively undergoing a state change – from being contained in a membrane to explosion to finding an equilibrium in its new form. The balloon we captured in high-speed photography is in a transitory state, when measured on a scale of milliseconds.

3. The interpretation

The ship

The ship’s line was derived by tracing the outline of the ship and the inversed outline of the ship from the Burtynsky photograph.

The motel

The motel’s line was derived by tracing the outline of one of the waves that were created from the balloon explosion.

The balloon

The balloon bursting line was derived from a tangent graph.

4. Reinterpretation

We placed all elements onto the same sheet using a variable scale.

We then plotted the intersections of the graph. The circles drawn around the loci of the intersections were structured according to the intensity of the collision; where the balloon (a ‘small’ scale) met the motel (a ‘medium’) scale, the circle was small; where the ship (a ‘large’ scale) met the motel (a ‘medium’ scale) the circle was larger.

The motel is thus represented in a transient state, similar to the three transient states it is derived from. The outcome is not necessarily a finished building, but represented through the geometric logic that has driven its creation.

The final image was printed and manipulated with paint, charcoal and wax. Click here to download a high-resolution version. Click here for the flickr image pool from the critique.

Stormy Monday

Ollie Palmer — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:35:09 +0000

Storms in Firenze, December 08

History of the internet

Ollie Palmer — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:18:26 +0000

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

The internet. Big. Useful. Intangible. Unintelligible. Gosh, you’re using it right now. But how did it come about?

This video uses beautifully bold, simple graphics to explain the overly technical aspects of networked computing that we all take for granted in a logical and concise way. The voiceover sounds like a proper documentary, like you’d watch at school.

If you like this, check out the Creative Commons-licensed icons the author has been slaving away over.