Final Essay

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

December 17^th, 2012.

Mapping what is not there: My Final Project.

As I am written this paper, I think about the wise words of James Corner. Corner writes in the first couple sentences of his essay: “Mapping is a fantastic cultural project, creating, and building the world as much as measuring and describing it. Long appreciated with the planning and design of cities, landscapes and buildings, mapping is particularly instrumental in the construing and construction of lived space.” Since my created embodied spaces don’t have an actual space on a traditional map, I decided to map what is not there; what is missing; what is essential. With the help of two different, but relevant landmarks in the United States, I embodied my spatial spaces and experienced what others would experience in the practiced spaces. One of the landmarks is right here in Brooklyn, NYC, The Brooklyn Bridge; the other in Colorado, the Grand Canyon Skywalk. My final project is based on the verb “to gather”, the spaces become the noun gathering, and the verb reflects to numerous activities performed in space.

A lot of activities are to be performed in the overall space. People can walk with their families, listen to music, seat and have lunch in the second space. Overall the site and the building are public. Public but private at the same time… When one walks the scared slabs in New York City, you often find yourself in your own place. You feel lonely when hundreds of others are walking the street as you.  With that in mind, I wanted my space to be sanctuaries, spaces you practice and embody. I wanted people to feel important, the world belongs to them by creating a space where the connections between humans were turned off to emphasize the connection between man and nature.  Most of us have lost that connection, we forget about our environment, the community we live in. We forget about the mapping process, we simply trace. We put things in their designated spaces so we don’t have to look for it. We simply overlook our actions and its impacts on other generations.  Many architects use the word interaction in their concept for their design. I personally think it’s an excellent idea to try to reconnect man, but they are going about this the wrong way. Before a man and another man can interact, the men need to interact with nature first.

            Re-visiting the process I had gone through to create my spaces, the first thing I did was create a ground plane. I had the freedom to create my own ground plane, we all did. I could have been simple meaning flat or slanted. It all depended on what concept I was going to go with and honestly, timing. Stuck between two choices, I went back to my roots. I was born in the United States and raised in Haiti. I have learned a lot there, I’ve acknowledged: jazz, drums, mountains, and water were a part of your daily life.  “Why not included my roots?” I said, excitedly.  I wanted my project to be different, to have something no one had. My ground plane involves my lofted model from a previous assignment. The lofted model is embedded into the rock which is a cliff. The lofted model is also penetrating the water.

My first architectural piece, my secondary space was created by meeting together every paper model at the corners or ends. At the end, it created a “Y” structure. In Rhino, I floated the structure without even remembering the consequences. In Rhino, there’s no gravity. Any object can float, it is very easy to move something upwards and forget about its weight. When I assembled the model outside of rhino but in the physical world, it was very hard to float the space. It’s was too heavy even though it was constructed out foam, balsa (some type of wood), basswood sticks and plexiglass.  It was a place where people can walk on the skywalk look at the beautiful view, and hopefully they would take something out of the experience. This is where; my landmark, Grand Canyon Sky-walk helped me again. People visit and travel to Arizona to take steps on the glass pathways. Most walk on the side for security and others break-dance in the middle of the glass. Even though I have never been there, I know what it feels like, I’ve read people’s opinions about their experiences and the structure itself.

My second structure architectural structure, the hybrid space is in an area where you could seat, eat, or relax. There are added steps so people can sit. The hybrid space is just a scaled version of my partner’s paper model. We had to take one of ours and one of theirs to create space that people could embody. Just like the last one, this space was created physically with the same material as the last one. The hybrid is the biggest space in my model, a good number of people could be up there.

My third structure, my tertiary space is the entrance of the site. It is where you enter or exit by boat. Although my other spaces were floated about ground, it was floated on sea water. As you enter, you see musicians playing as a sign of welcome. It is also made out of foam, balsa, plexiglass and basswood sticks. It was created by attaching two of my own paper models in Rhino.

The three spaces were very different from each other; they served their own purpose which is why I created different skins for the three. The skin of the space is determined by the number of triangles and the length of the base of the triangles. Ex: If the base of a larger triangle equals six. Six is divided by three, the number of sides, equaling to two. Conclusion: two triangles now sit within the bigger triangle. The skin relates back to one of my original hand-draw point drawings. The triangles were drawn by joining the 3rd trial of pencil drops together on an 18 by 18 grid. I translated the drawing by creating a gridded frame, inserting triangles at the intersections, and trimming down parts of the triangle. The stripped horizontal skin allows light to penetrate through, opening the small qualitative space even more. The overall skin will produce incredible shadows at night. The plexiglass are one inch tall.

The most essential auditory experience created by architecture is tranquility.  Architecture presents the drama of construction silenced into matter, space and light.  Ultimately architecture is the art of petrified silence writes Pallasma (p51).  My spatial qualities were created to fit the landscape and its echoes.  

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Reflection and Cover Page.

I enjoyed going to class every day even though I wanted to sleep. I wanted to do much better for this, but design and technics was put in front of it. More time to read and comprehend the texts more would have improved my understanding of the course and Design. I’ve learned so much from this class. Thank You Prof. Frey for helping us understanding Design I better, those discussions helped in terms of the language I wanted to use when I presented my project. Thank You for understanding my grammar, giving me an opportunity to fix my essay.

 Thank You so much, Bayyinah

Site Analysis

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I     

December 6^th 2012.

From a Dot on a Map to a Milieu: The parks in Clinton Hill.

Underwood Park, Clayson Playground, and Lafayette Gardens Playground are all parks located in and around Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Without their locations on a NYC map, the parks are not very similar in terms of the people who visit the park daily. The racial battle and division going on in and around the parks in Clinton Hill altered them into Christmas presents left to be unwrapped. The Parks are not just a dot, a tree or the symbolic green color on a map; they are inhabited by people, people of different races. They embody the people who live or lived nearby. They voice the stories of the people who visit them. A sense of community, the faces of the people who live in pass by Clinton Hill were missing from the maps found on Google. Information was lost in the bigger plan, the bigger area, and the division of Brooklyn. The loss in the translation arrived with a bigger problem, confusion. A present racial battle left a freshman college student curious and confused about the things that are happening in 11205.

Clinton Hill like every other neighborhood as boundaries, but do those boundaries define the people who visit its parks? Its boundaries form trapezoid shape along the streets of Atlantic, Flushing, Vanderbilt, and Classon Ave. It is relatively a historic district founded by a Dutch family. It was first developed to be a suburban community for middle-class, but it went on to be the neighborhood where the rich settled. Clinton Hill became the site where mansions were built.  With new mansions and new townhouses Clinton Hill became and still is a beautiful flourishing neighborhood.  Until the 1920s, Clinton Hill was populated with people of great wealth, but soon after the recession, after WW1, Middle class made its way back to the community.  Most of the people with the high status and great wealth left the area to Manhattan. Mansions were no longer built and they decided to destroy some to accommodate the new habitants.

Underwood Park opened a can of warms; it wasn't the cold weather that day or the noisy cars that were speeding on Lafayette but the color of one’s skin. The people who were at the park that evening divided themselves into three different race and ethnicity, however one category was missing. Without even knowing what information would be found or would have to be written about, a cold bench was suddenly occupied. What was noticed was fascinating. For the amount of kids seen, one race was missing. Kids of color were nonexistent along the perimeter and area of the closed gated park. The babies playing in the cold weather where either black with kinky curls (meaning bi-racial) or Caucasian with little blonde curls.

That may not be surprising or fascinating to most, but, when you live in almost the center of a state that is known to be a “melting pot”. You began to wonder why it is the way it is. Even though bi-racial kids were playing in the park, no moms or dads of color were spotted per say. The black woman was taking care of little blonde kids. It was pretty apparent that she was their nanny by the way she was talked to the kids and cared for those kids, a boy and a girl. The boy was running away from her, he almost reached the street, when his sister joined him. She called them a couple times but she’s wasn’t firm enough. A mother would have been firmed, it’s almost like she did not want to upset them.  

Straight down Lafayette, two blocks away from Higgins Hall, there was another park. Along my stroll, the scenery changed there were more graffiti on the walls, but the area was still very nice. One more block, and it was in a different world. Suddenly, the quiet of the neighborhood had been in was overpowered by reggae music, a group of teenagers where playing. The traffic, the sudden yells here and there, all changed the vibe of the neighborhood.

At the corner, where the music was playing there was a park, Clayson Playground, not a lot of people were there, only three to be exact, a boy eating hot chicken wings sitting on a bench, his brother shooting hoops next to him, and a women eating chips at the right of the opened gate when I walked in. No kids on the swings, No biracial kids, No blonde babies, and the people who were there we’re all black. I looked at the navigation on my phone, as I typed in the word park, and there was one two blocks away from Clayson.

When I got to Lafayette Gardens Playground not much was different from the previous park, but this time older kids were playing together, they were probably around the ages of eight to eleven, I don’t know they didn't look that old and I didn't look to young either. So, I’m guessing around there since I didn't ask, all I asked them was to get their permission to film them riding a battery-powered small toy car down the swing set. It looked cool but they could have hurt themselves.

            As soon as I turned my back, I heard a little boy: “Who is she, she sound mad white”. This is not the first time someone has said that about my voice. It doesn’t happen too often but it happened before. Coming from Haiti, learning English through television and friends, you began to sound a way black people would describe as white or stuck-up.         I suppose when you talk properly like a normal person should and you do not shorten your words, you sound “mad” white. I don’t know what it means, my friend once tried to explain it to me ,but all I got from the conversation  was him saying Haitian are not exactly black, they’re fake blacks. This at the end might be true. I was raised in a traveling family were it wasn’t a whole until Christmas or Summer Vacations. My father and brother lived in New York, while my mother, sister and I lived in Haiti; where we learned to put education, respect, and authority above all things. I thought him saying I was mad white funny though, but the others went on to say: “who are you, bitch?” and that was inappropriate, they were kids.  As I walked out of the gate, they kept cursing still, but I realized that there was no sign on the gate reminding people to close the gate because of children just like there was in first park I went to. That added more pieces to the puzzle, suddenly; the puzzle was too crazy to finish in time and properly. What puzzle you may ask? Well, the one where I figured out why small children and babies have their own little park, why the black boys were cursing at the park, why they are so many bi-racial and blonde babies in one neighborhood, and why the places are significantly different when they are in the same area and have the same zip code? 

            With research come up with a reason, it maybe the blacks that moved in after the1920s are now leaving the new real estate hotspot. A one bedroom apartment in Clinton Hill is now on average 3,300.00$ a month. “At this point, the majority of the population is upper-middle-class,” said a woman interviewed on the street by New York Times. “Many of the residents who have lived in the neighborhood are moving out, as the rents are crazy.” A man was also interviewed and he had a similar answer: “I think, well, blacks are declining, but whether a specific neighborhood declines or increases has a lot of other things going on,” said Mr. Beveridge. Though he said he does not know the specifics of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill’s demographic shifts, he said, “It could be that the yuppies are moving in, you know, poor people are moving out.”

The black population in the 18 census tracts that make up the geographic boundaries of those neighborhoods dropped by 31.4 percent. Census tract 185.01 had the biggest increase in Asians, 1,150 percent. This is the area that includes Whitman Houses. Census tract 33 had the biggest decrease in blacks, 50 percent. This is the area between DeKalb and Lafayette Avenues, east of Flatbush Avenue. Census tract 227 had one of the biggest increases in whites, 480 percent or almost 600 people. This area straddles Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, north of Atlantic Avenue between Grand and Bedford Avenues. The 2010 census count shows that Fort Greene and Clinton Hill’s black population has declined by a third since 2000.

11205.

 

 

Site Analysis: Rude kids!

Site Analysis

Design Studio Reflection.

This is week is the last week before the Final. Stressful? I don't lnow, I am expecting everything to go wrong, no sleep, and less time to eat.  Right now, I am in the process of  finializing my drwings. I'm hoping I could finish Tomorrow night that way I could print them out the next day wich is a thursday. I'm not sure if I'll accomplish that goal. I hope I will, but with so many obstacles it seems impossible to be honest. For example, this week we have to attend other class and do our homework as well. It's crazy!!!. I've been difigurized, I don't look the same, somehow I look older(this is not a joke). Also, my maturity level has reached the you need to party. I haven't been to one party since I've been in Higgins. Stessful Place!!! Back to work now.

THIS IS WHAT I'M WORKING ON!!!

Design Project Analysis

Bayyinah C Pierre

English

HMS 101

November 27^th 2012.

Design Project Analysis.

Thesis: The title of my project should be: Never Ends Project. Without ever knowing it started on Nov 27^th 2012 and will never end.  It started the first day of school, when our Professor, Brackett handed my studio-mates and I a rubric. In the rubric there was a due date. Little did I know that is was just a trick, some sort of a hook. The date marked was an illusion, it kept me from looking at how much rope I had been given to hang myself. “When will did project end?” became a dull question. My final project literally began the first day of class.

Page 1:

·         Intro/ developed thesis

·         First Rubric

·         Relation between the First rubric to the final model

Page 2:

·         First Project

·         Line drawing

·         Line drawings in rhino

·         Bass wood Model

·         First Review

Page3:

·         Collages

·         Rhino translation

·         Paper models

·         Aggregation System

Page4:

·         Populated Cube

·         27 sections

·         Lofted model

Page 5:

·         Study model

·         Ground plan

·         Site plan

·         Created Spaces.

 

·         Habitation

·         Layout/ scaling

·         Drawings and Materials

·         Final Model

·         Conclusion

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

November 14^th 2012.

From a Dot on a Map to a Milieu.

The site analyses that I completed at the Underwood Park, Clayson Playground, and Lafayette Gardens Playground are very different from their locations on a map. The Parks are not just a dot, a tree or the symbolic green color on a map. They’re much more than that, they represent something to someone who lives or lived nearby. They voice the stories of the people who live around it.  My site analyses present themselves with more information. Information, I couldn't have known had I not visited those parks at that specific time in the day. Facts and a sense of community were missing from the map I looked on Google. I supposed they were lost in the bigger plan, the bigger area. With that loss of translation came a bigger problem, confusion. A present racial battle left a freshman college student curious and confused about the things that are happening in 11205.

In my site analysis at Underwood Park I observed a lot of things, but one thing stuck, it resurfaced over and over again. It wasn't the cold weather that day or the noisy cars that were speeding on Lafayette but the color of one’s skin. I kept coming back to the people who were there, what racial category would they be put in.  Without even knowing what I going to find or have to write about, what I noticed was fascinating in a sense. The babies who were playing in the cold weather where either black (meaning bi-racial) and Caucasian with little blonde curls. That may not be surprising or fascinating to most, but, when you live in almost the center of a state that is known to be a melting pot. You began to wonder why it is the way it is. Where are the Asians, the Blacks (the ones that are not mixed), the Spanish, where were they?

Race was a big thing at the park, and even though bi-racial kids were playing in the park, I didn't really notice any moms or dads that were black per say. The black woman I noticed where all “taking care” of little blonde kids. An Asian boy and his father were there but they were the only Asians. I didn't really know what that meant so I decided to walk straight down Lafayette because I noticed a park a couple blocks from Higgins once; I haven’t been in the neighborhood for too long.

Along my stroll, the scenery changed a little I noticed more graffiti on the walls, but the area was still very nice. One more block, and I was in a different world. Suddenly, the quiet of the neighborhood I had been in was overpowered by the reggae music of a group of teenagers where playing, the traffic, the sudden yells here and there. To be honest, I preferred that environment better. It reminded me of back home, coming from Haiti your soul inhabits drums, loud music, community, and the fact that sense life.

At the corner, where the music was playing there was a park, Clayson Playground, not a lot of people were there, only three to be exact, a boy eating hot chicken wings sitting on a bench, I assumed his brother shooting hoops next to him, and a women eating chips at my right when I walked in. No kids on the swings, No biracial kids, No blonde babies, and the people who were present we’re all black. I thought to myself as I walked out: “Wow, no one’s here!!! How confusing can this get?” So I looked at the navigation on my phone, and I typed in the park, and one two blocks away showed up. I decided to go hoping maybe I could find an answer that could justify for the so-called race wars in my head.

When I got to Lafayette Gardens Playground not much was different from the previous park, but this time older kids were playing together, they were probably around the ages of eight to eleven, I don’t know they didn't look that old and I didn't look to young either. So, I’m guessing around there since I didn't ask, all I asked them was to get their permission to film them riding a battery-powered small toy car down the swing set. It looked cool but they could have hurt themselves.

 As soon as I turned my back, I heard a little boy: “Who is she, she sound mad white” I thought it was funny, but the others went on to say: “who are you, bitch?” and that was inappropriate, they were kids.  As I walked out of the gate, they kept cursing still, but I realized that there was no sign on the gate reminding people to close the gate because of children just like there was in first park I went to. That added more pieces to the puzzle, suddenly; the puzzle was too crazy to finish in time and properly. What puzzle you may ask? Well, the one where I figured out why small children and babies have their own little park, why the black boys were cursing at the park, why they are so many bi-racial and blonde babies in one neighborhood, and why the places are significantly different when they are in the same area and have the same zip codes?  

My site analysis is more of a community map, it presents relationships and character. It introduces the economical and racial factors. I may have the answers to some of my questions already but I don’t know if they are facts, so, I am not going to share them.  I don’t know, maybe the world is changing.  Maybe, the original black male in 11205 married and had children with white female and they just moved to a specific segregated community, which would explain the age gap between the children at the parks.

I’m not sure. 11205. 

Site Analysis Paper

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

November 14^th 2012.

From a Dot on a Map to a Milieu.

The site analysis that I completed at the Underwood Park is very different then its location on a map. It’s not just a dot, a tree or the symbolic green color on a map. It’s different; it presents itself with more information. Information you couldn't have known it if you were at there at a specific time. A lot of information was hidden from people, lost in the bigger plan, the bigger area, they didn't show relationships, the neighborhood, the people who are go to park every day, and in what categories those people fit in.

In mu site analysis I observed a lot of things, but one thing stuck.  It’s not about the park or the weather when I was there. It’s about the people who were occupying the park at that specific time. Race was a big thing when I was in the park. They were a lot of biracial kids in the park. It was either that or a black nanny with blonde headed kids. An Asian boy and his father were there but they were the only Asians. I don’t really know what it means; I haven’t been in the neighborhood for too long. 11205 is a big community, just like anywhere in the city it is full of townhouses, but somehow these townhouses are very different for the others. The appeal is nicer. If I had to guess, I would say that the townhouses are habited by rich blonde people who can afford a nanny to watch their kids; and the biracial kids? I don‘t know, maybe the world is changing.

My site analysis is more of a community map, it presents relationships and character. It introduces the economical and racial factors. The kids who are playing at Underwood Park can show their kids where they used to spend their afternoons with the nanny or mommy.

 My map recreates Pratt Institute, one place around is defined. People would know about the community. They don’t have to be surprised once they find out that they are not in Manhattan but 11205 is part of New York City. Instead of looking at a green blur on Google Maps or any map, they know the type of people who frequent it every day, and with that they should what type of neighborhood this is.